This evening, an official statement said Port Said was in allied hands and the town had suffered little damage.

There was a sense of relief at the United Nations headquarters in New York as the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold announced the allies had accepted the terms of the UN ceasefire and had ordered troops to stop fighting.

The Israelis have also announced a ceasefire in the Sinai.

'Tough fighting'

At dawn today, French commandos sent over from Cyprus landed at Port Fuad and advanced south along the banks of the Suez Canal.

Yesterday, the British Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade, were brought into Port Said by naval helicopter.

They captured Gamil airfield after what Sir Charles Keightley, the allied commander-in-chief described as "some very tough fighting" with Egyptian troops armed with guns, mortars and tanks.

Allied casualties are reported to be light with 30 members of the 16th Parachute Brigade injured. Some 70 Egyptians soldiers have been killed.

Sunken ships block canal

Last week, the Soviet leader Nikolai Bulganin proposed sending his troops to the Middle East to restore peace to the region.

The suggestion was rejected in a statement issued by the White House as "unthinkable" and "an obvious attempt to divert world attention from the Hungarian tragedy".

The next major task for the allies is to restore order to the two ports and to clear the entrance to the Suez Canal currently blocked by ships sunk by the Egyptians.

The canal was nationalised on 26 July by Egypt's President Abdel Nasser after the US turned down a previous offer to fund a new dam at Aswan.

The move outraged the canal's Anglo-French owners as well as the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, who has compared President Nasser to Adolf Hitler.

The present military action began on 29 October, when Israel invaded the Sinai.

British and French planes entered the fray two days later after President Nasser refused their offer of creating a buffer zone between Israel and Egypt.

They began by destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground.

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