The United Nations General Assembly yesterday backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council "reconsider the matter favourably."

The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member -- a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian state -- after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.

The assembly adopted a resolution yesterday with 143 votes in favour and nine against - including the US and Israel - while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognises them as qualified to join.

The General Assembly resolution "determines that the State of Palestine ... should therefore be admitted to membership" and it "recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favourably."

"We want peace, we want freedom," Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly before the vote. "A yes vote is a vote for Palestinian existence, it is not against any state. ... It is an investment in peace."

"Voting yes is the right thing to do," he said in remarks that drew applause.

Under the founding UN Charter, membership is open to "peace-loving states" that accept the obligations in that document and are able and willing to carry them out.

More than 100,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in recent days, the United Nations said yesterday, with the southern Gaza city under threat of a full-scale Israeli ground invasion.

Israel's military on Monday called for Gazans to leave eastern Rafah, which triggered widespread international alarm.

The UN children's agency Unicef said more than 100,000 had left, with the UN humanitarian agency OCHA putting the figure at more than 110,000.

Georgios Petropoulos, head of OCHA's sub-office in Gaza, said the situation in the besieged Palestinian territory had reached "even more unprecedented levels of emergency".

Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing the eastern and western halves of Rafah yesterday, effectively encircling the entire eastern side of the city in the southern Gaza Strip.

Residents described almost constant explosions and gunfire east and northeast of the city yesterday, with intense fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said yesterday that at least 34,904 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during the seven-month-long Israeli offensive.

Ceasefire talks broke up on Thursday with no agreement to halt the fighting and release Israeli hostages.

Hamas had said it agreed at the start of the week to a proposal submitted by Qatari and Egyptian mediators that had previously been accepted by Israel. Israel said the Hamas proposal contained elements it cannot accept.

• Over 100,000 Palestinians fled Gaza's Rafah in recent days
• Israeli tanks encircle eastern, western halves of Rafah