Assault could last weeks: Israel

GAZA CITY: Israel warned on Sunday that it could send ground troops into Gaza as its warplanes again pounded Hamas targets in the enclave where more than 290 Palestinians have been killed in less than two days.

Hamas responded by firing rockets the deepest yet into Israel, with one hitting without causing casualties not far from Ashdod, home to Israel’s second-largest port some 30 kms north of Gaza, medics said.

Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak vowed to expand the mammoth bombing campaign, unleashed in retaliation for ongoing militant rocket fire. “The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) will expand and deepen its operations in Gaza as much as necessary,” he told reporters before a cabinet meeting.

“If it’s necessary to deploy ground forces to defend our citizens, we will do so,” his spokesman quoted him as saying earlier. The cabinet gave the green light to call up 6,500 reserve soldiers, a senior official told reporters after the meeting.

Israeli television said the army had begun concentrating ground forces near the tiny Palestinian enclave, where medics said at least 282 people were killed and more than 600 wounded since early on Saturday.

Warplanes continued to pound the impoverished and overcrowded territory of 1.5mn, where many streets were deserted and schools and shops stayed shut as hundreds of funerals were held. Businesses in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem observed a strike in protest at the onslaught.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said the campaign was launched “in order to regain a normal life for the citizens in the south who have suffered for many years from incessant rocket, mortar and terror attacks.” Israel is “aiming to change the situation on the ground whereby in the future there will be a tranquil border between Israel and Gaza,” Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog told reporters.

Hamas defiant
But Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian movement branded a terror group by Israel and the West, remained defiant. Its exiled leader Khaled Meshaal called in Damascus for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel and promised more suicide attacks.

Hamas’s last suicide bombing in Israel was in January 2005.

The Israeli bombardment, one of the bloodiest 24-hour periods in the 60-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the largest military operations in Gaza since Israel captured it in the 1967 war, sparked huge international concern.

Egypt, which had brokered a six-month Israel-Hamas truce that expired on December 19, said it was trying to negotiate a new ceasefire.

But a senior government official said that “we have our goals and our timetable and we don’t seek mediation. We haven’t received any offer of mediation.” Israel’s main ally Washington has blamed Hamas “thugs” for provoking the campaign by firing rockets into the Jewish state from Gaza, and urged Israel to avoid causing civilian casualties.

Amid the bombing, Barak also authorised the passage of an aid convoy into Gaza on Sunday, his spokeswoman said.

Israel has kept Gaza largely sealed off since Hamas violently seized power there in June 2007, overrunning forces loyal to secular president Mahmud Abbas.

Israel unleashed “Operation Cast Lead” against Hamas at mid-morning on Saturday, with some 60 warplanes hitting more than 50 targets in just a few minutes. By Sunday, the Israeli military had hit some 230 targets inside Gaza, the army said.

Hamas has responded by firing more than 90 rockets and mortar rounds at Israel, killing one man and wounding a handful of others.

Israel clamined half of Hamas’s rocket launching sites were destroyed in the initial attacks.