GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli warplanes struck the Palestinian Interior Ministry early Friday, setting it ablaze as Arab leaders tried to forge a deal that would halt the Israeli offensive and free a 19-year-old soldier held by gunmen allied with the ruling Islamic Hamas.

The bombing was one of more than a dozen across the Gaza Strip after midnight, though Israel called off a planned ground invasion of northern Gaza yesterday in order to give diplomacy another chance.

President Mubarak of Egypt said terrorists agreed to a conditional release of the kidnapped soldier but that Israel had yet to accept their terms, which he did not specify. Israel said it was not familiar with any such offer.

No one was hurt in the strike on the Interior Ministry in downtown Gaza City. The Israeli military said the ministry office, controlled by Hamas, was “a meeting place to plan and direct terror activity.” The Interior Ministry is nominally in charge of Palestinian Arab security forces, though the moderate Palestinian Arab leader, Mahmoud Abbas, removed most of its authority.

Israeli warplanes also hit a Fatah office, a Hamas facility in Gaza City, and roads and open fields. During the day, aircraft and artillery pounded sites across the coastal strip, including suspected weapons factories, an electrical transformer, and terrorist training camps.

Palestinian Arab hospital officials said a 5-year-old girl was wounded in a northern airstrike early Friday, the first casualty in more than two days of military action that began with a ground invasion of southern Gaza. Doctors said her condition was not serious.

On Gaza’s southern border, hundreds of Palestinian Arab and Egyptian police formed human cordons to block Palestinian Arabs trying to escape into Egypt after terrorists blasted a hole in a cement wall near the crossing.

Israel also vowed to hunt down the killers of a kidnapped 18-year-old, Eliahu Asheri, whose body was found yesterday in the West Bank with a gunshot wound to the head. Hamas-linked terrorists said they killed him.

Mr. Abbas, a moderate, met with Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and spoke twice with Mr. Mubarak to try to end the crisis, an Abbas aide said.

In remarks published Friday, Mr. Mubarak told the pro-government Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram that “Egyptian contacts with several Hamas leaders resulted in preliminary, positive results in the shape of a conditional agreement to hand over the Israeli soldier as soon as possible to avoid an escalation. But agreement on this has not yet been reached with the Israeli side.”

A senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, Gideon Meir, said Israel did not know of such an offer and would have no comment until later Friday.

“The soldier will only be released unconditionally and there will be no negotiations with a gang of terrorists and criminals,” Mr. Meir told the Associated Press. “There is nothing to talk with them about.”

Earlier, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said significant diplomatic developments were possible, though he did not indicate there had been a breakthrough.

“Right now, our thoughts are focused on the unconditional liberation of the kidnapped soldier,” he said in a speech to air force graduates. “The efforts to bring about his return are being carried out intensively through various channels.”

Israel said the crisis will end when Corporal Gilad Shalit is released.

“If the Palestinians act now to release Corporal Shalit and hand him back to us … we would immediately initiate a dramatic reduction in tension,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said. “He is the primary issue, he is the primary reason for the crisis.”

After previous diplomatic efforts by Egypt, Jordan, France, and other nations failed, Israel sent thousands of soldiers into vacant areas of southern Gaza on Wednesday.

But yesterday, Israel decided to delay a further offensive into northern Gaza at Egypt’s request, an Israeli official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the diplomacy. Israeli officials said the delay also was meant to defuse possible international criticism of a broad ground campaign in Gaza.