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Israel pounds Gaza for second day, nearly 290 killed
28 Dec 2008 16:47:15 GMT
 Source: Reuters
A Palestinian boy walks past a destroyed mosque following an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip.
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A Palestinian boy walks past a destroyed mosque following an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip.
REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

Background

•  Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Israel pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip from the air on Sunday for a second day and prepared for a possible invasion of the territory after killing nearly 290 Palestinians in the opening rounds of a powerful offensive.

Israel said the campaign that began on Saturday was a response to almost daily rocket and mortar fire that intensified after Hamas, an Islamist group in charge of the coastal enclave Israel quit in 2005, ended a six-month ceasefire a week ago.

Despite the air attacks, militants fired some 80 rockets into Israel, emergency services said. In one of the longest-reaching salvoes, two rockets struck near Ashdod, a main port 30 km (18 miles) from Gaza, causing no casualties.

Israeli tanks deployed on the edge of the Gaza Strip, poised to enter the densely populated enclave of 1.5 million Palestinians. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet approved a call-up of 6,500 reservists, a government official said.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who hopes to become prime minister after elections in February, appeared to rule out a large-scale invasion aimed at restoring Israeli control of the blockaded territory once dotted with Jewish settlements.

"Our goal is not to reoccupy Gaza Strip," she said on NBC's "Meet the Press" programme. Asked on Fox News if Israel was out to topple Gaza's Hamas rulers, Livni replied: "Not now."

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert, said Israel would press on with the campaign "until we have a new security environment in the south, when the population there will no longer live in terror and in fear of constant rocket barrages".

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum urged Palestinian groups to use "all available means, including martyrdom operations" -- a reference to suicide bombings in Israel -- to "protect the Palestinian people".

Keeping pressure on Hamas after bombing runs that turned Saturday into one of the bloodiest days for Palestinians in 60 years of conflict, Israeli aircraft flattened the group's main security compound in Gaza, killing at least four security men.

Israel expanded its air campaign to the southern Gaza Strip, bombing some 40 smuggling tunnels running under the border with Egypt, part of a network that is lifeline to the outside world.

Israeli bombs also destroyed Hamas's regional headquarters and medical officials said several people were wounded. A militant was killed in an air strike in the northern Gaza Strip.

The deaths raised to 287 the number of Palestinian dead since Saturday, when Israel launched what one Israeli newspaper columnist described as "shock and awe" air strikes against Hamas facilities. More than 700 Palestinians were wounded.

One Israeli was killed on Saturday by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.

CIVILIANS

Hamas estimated that at least 15 women and some children had been killed in the past two days. "Palestine has never seen an uglier massacre," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said.

Livni said Israel was "trying to make all the efforts to target only terrorists and Hamas headquarters and places, but unfortunately, in a war, like any war, sometimes also civilians pay the price".

Israeli military affairs commentators said Israeli leaders, wary of taking the politically risky move of reoccupying the Gaza Strip ahead of Israel's Feb. 10 election, were using the offensive to try to bolster the country's deterrence power and force Hamas into a long-term truce.

Violence spread to the occupied West Bank, where Israeli soldiers opened fire at rock-throwing Palestinian protesters. Palestinian medical officials said one Palestinian was killed.

In Hebron, also in the West Bank, Palestinian forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah shot and wounded three people during a protest by Islamist groups in support of Hamas, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

The U.N. Security Council, responding to the Gaza operation, called on all sides to cease fire. Brushing aside the appeal, an Israeli official said Israel was feeling little international pressure to halt its operations.

In the Gaza Strip, parents kept their children home from school as the roar of Israeli aircraft and thunder of explosions echoed in the distance. Schools in Israel's southern communities, due to reopen on Tuesday after the Jewish holiday of Hannukah, were ordered to remain shut.

Abbas, speaking in Cairo, blamed Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in 2007, for triggering Israel's raids by not extending the ceasefire that Egypt brokered in June.

U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, in its final weeks in office, put the onus on Hamas to prevent more violence.

Aid groups said they feared a humanitarian crisis. Gaza hospitals said they were running out of supplies because of a long-standing Israeli-led blockade of the territory.

Palestinian officials said 10 truckloads of flour and medical supplies were transferred through an Israeli border terminal on Sunday. (Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch, Dan Williams, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Douglas Hamilton and Adam Entous in Jerusalem, and Wafa Amr in Ramallah, Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Editing by Giles Elgood)


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An Israeli soldier directs a tank at a military staging area just outside the northern Gaza Strip December 28, 2008. Israel pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip from the air ...


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Last updated:Sun Dec 28 16:48:54 2008