Jerusalem  - Israel will free 250 Palestinian prisoners in advance of a Muslim holiday next month, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas when the two met in Jerusalem Monday afternoon.

The two held talks amid a collapsing truce between Israel and the Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip. The truce has been unraveling since last week, as Palestinians fire rockets at southern Israel and Israel targets militants.

Abbas said after his talks with Olmert that Gaza had figured "extensively" in the meeting. He called on the Palestinian factions in the salient to stop firing the "useless" missiles, a call he has made previously, but without success.

Speaking during a joint news conference in Ramallah with visiting UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Abbas said he and Olmert had discussed all issues, specifically the core disputes of the conflict, which are currently being negotiated, and the release of the 250 prisoners.

Israel has carried several such releases over the past year in "goodwill measures" aimed at boosting public support for the moderate Palestinian president as opposed to his main rival, the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza. All those released so far were members of Abbas' secular Fatah movement. No Hamas militants were among them.

But even as the Gaza truce threatens to disintegrate completely, Israel allowed basic humanitarian aid into Gaza for the first time in almost two weeks Monday, but kept its border crossings shut to fuel and non-essential goods.

At the same time, militants continued their rocket fire at southern Israel, with at least eight Gaza-made rockets and one mortar shell landing mostly in and near Israeli agricultural communities bordering the strip Monday.

The radical Islamic Jihad faction claimed responsibility for the latest rockets, which brought to at least 135 the number of projectiles launched from Gaza since the truce began falling apart two weeks ago.

Thirty-three trucks with medical supplies and basic food commodities, including dairy products and meat, crossed through the Kerem Shalom passage between southern Gaza and Israel, an Israeli defence ministry official said.

The majority was earmarked for United Nations humanitarian organizations and the Red Cross, which provide food aid on which about half the Gaza Strip's population of
1.5 million is dependant.

The humanitarian shipment came "despite the rockets which were fired into Israel today," Israeli army spokesman Major Peter Lerner told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

A similar shipment had been scheduled to enter Gaza on Thursday, but was cancelled at the last minute due to a "specific security threat" at the Kerem Shalom crossing, he said. Only a limited amount of fuel was allowed in that day for Gaza's only power plant, he added.

Gaza City has been experiencing electricity blackouts over the past week, after the plant stopped working due to lack of fuel.

Israel "must lift the blockade and allow the entry of fuel, food, medicine and other humanitarian needs for the residents," Saeb Erekat, a top Abbas aide, told Voice of Palestine Radio.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni earlier said Israel expected the international community to support its responses to the renewed rocket fire from Gaza.

The European Union over the weekend harshly criticized Israel for closing off the Gaza Strip to fuel and all but the bare minimum of humanitarian aid in response to the rocket attacks.

"Israel cannot just sit by and watch as its citizens are attacked," a statement from Livni's office quoted her as telling Miliband when they met Sunday.

The Egyptian-brokered truce has been steadily deteriorating since November 4, when a brief Israeli military incursion aimed at destroying an underground tunnel sparked fierce clashes with local gunmen.

Some 14 Palestinians were killed in those clashes, a confrontation later last week and in an Israeli airstrike Sunday. The fatalities were mostly militants of the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza and another faction, the Popular Resistance Committees, but one civilian was also among them.

Hamas slammed Abbas, of the rival Fatah party, for holding the meeting with Olmert. Abbas was being "dictated" by Israel to destroy Hamas, spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement sent to the media.

"Abbas has abandoned all national obligations toward his own people and completely adopted Zionist-American designs," he said. (dpa)