Israeli soldiers prepare their tanks as they take position on the northern border with the Gaza Strip yesterday.

Israel pounds Gaza for third day; tanks on the border

GAZA/TEL AVIV: Palestinian militants launched missiles last night at Israeli targets which had not previously come under fire, as Israel, after three days of massive airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, was readying to expand its offensive against the group to a ground assault.

The toll of Operation “Cast Lead”—launched Saturday to curb rocket and mortar attacks from the strip - reached to at least 345 Palestinians dead and 1,600 injured, Gaza emergency services chief Mu’awia Hassanein said. Four Israelis have also been killed and dozens injured.

Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip slammed into the Israeli port city of Ashdod last night, fatally injuring one person, injuring another critically, and three others lightly.

The Russian-produced Grad missiles which hit Ashdod, over 30km from the Gaza Strip, marked the furthest a rocket fired from the salient has landed in Israel, although one rocket landed south of the city on Sunday.

At the same time as the strike on Ashdod, other missiles and mortar shells showered Israeli communities closer to the Strip, killing one person, bringing to three the number of people killed in rocket attacks yesterday and to four the number killed by the missiles since the Israeli offensive began. Large columns of tanks, military vehicles and buses with Israeli soldiers on board meanwhile have moved southwards, deploying near the Israeli border with Gaza in what could indicate a possible ground invasion, witnesses said.

The Israeli army also declared the area around Gaza a “closed military zone,” meaning no civilians will be allowed through roadblocks set up on key entry roads. The Israeli cabinet on Sunday authorised the call up of 6,500 reserve soldiers. A military spokesman, Captain Benjamin Rutland, however, said the soldiers had not been mobilised yet and this could take as long as one day.

Observers said this meant any ground offensive was unlikely to start soon. They added Israel was likely to get as much out of the airstrikes as long as the clear weather, forecast to turn today, permitted. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak reiterated yesterday that the offensive in Gaza would be expanded “as much as necessary” until its goals were achieved.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel would “exhaust” the offensive until it achieved a change in the balance of power between itself and Hamas, the radical Islamic movement ruling Gaza.

The latest Palestinian deaths included at least seven killed in the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabaliya. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the target was a truck transporting “dozens” of Russian-type Grad rockets, which she said Hamas was apparently trying to relocate to another hideout as a result of Israel’s massive assaults on warehouses and underground bunkers storing rockets.

The Gaza emergency services chief, Hassanein, said that more than 250 injured Palestinians were in serious condition and needed urgent transfers to hospitals outside the strip. Hamas, however, is said to have rejected an offer by Cairo to allow the transportation of severely wounded Gazans to Egypt. AGENCIES

A car in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis was also rocketed, killing four militants of the radical Islamic Jihad faction and one of the men’s nine-year-old sons.

The Israel Air Force bombed and rocketed at least 65 more Hamas targets throughout Gaza yesterday.

Militant factions in Gaza, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, nevertheless continued their rocket and mortar attacks from the enclave at southern Israel, launching over 60 by last night.

One Israeli, an Arab Bedouin from the south of the country, was killed yesterday when a Russian-type Grad rocket fired by Hamas struck the construction site where he was working in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. At least 14 others were injured.

The majority of the Palestinian dead are Hamas militants, but at least 57 are civilians, according to a “conservative” and “rising” tally carried out in hospitals by staff of a UN agency in Gaza, a spokesman said.

The Gaza emergency services chief, Hassanein, said that more than 250 injured Palestinians were in serious condition and needed urgent transfers to hospitals outside the strip. Hamas, however, is said to have rejected an offer by Cairo to allow the transportation of severely wounded Gazans to Egypt.

A military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said targets hit yesterday included the Gaza City office of de-facto Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas. Residents said a neighbour’s house in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp was hit instead.

Planes also bombed more smuggling tunnels along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, while the Israel Navy shelled Hamas outposts on the coast and inland, she said.

As many as 40 tunnels, used to smuggle goods and weapons into the strip, were said to have already been destroyed in a matter of minutes when bombed on Sunday.

A Palestinian stabbed and injured three Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Qiryat Sefer, west of Ramallah yesterday morning, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said. An armed paramedic shot and seriously wounded the attacker.

Israeli police were on high alert to prevent further revenge attacks and rioting, after thousands of Arab Israelis and Palestinians, throwing stones and bottles, protested Sunday against the Gaza campaign in East Jerusalem and in such Arab towns as Umm el-Fahm, northern Israel.

Israel launched the Gaza offensive one week after a six-month, Egyptian-mediated truce ended, which Hamas had announced it would not renew. During that week, Gaza militants fired more than 200 rockets and mortars at southern Israel.

DPA

The Israel Air Force bombed and rocketed dozens more targets throughout Gaza yesterday, on the third day of a massive air offensive against Hamas, aimed at curbing rocket and mortar attacks from the enclave.

Five daughters of Anouar Balousha, a resident of the densely-populated northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, were killed when debris flew into his house, located close to a Hamas-used mosque targeted late on Sunday. The youngest was four, the oldest 15 years old. Two boys aged around six and 12 were also killed by shrapnel in the southern town of Rafah, hospital officials said.

Large columns of tanks, military vehicles and buses with Israeli soldiers on board meanwhile have moved southwards, deploying near the Israeli border with Gaza in what could indicate a possible impending ground invasion, witnesses said. The Israeli army also declared the area around Gaza a “closed military zone,” meaning no civilians will be allowed through roadblocks set up on key entry roads.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak reiterated yesterday that the offensive in Gaza would be expanded “as much as necessary” until its goals were achieved. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel would “exhaust” the offensive until it achieved a change in the balance of power between itself and Hamas, the radical Islamic movement ruling Gaza.

At least 316 Palestinians, many of them of Hamas, have been killed since the massive air campaign, codenamed “Operation Cast Lead,” started on Saturday, just over a week after a fragile, six-month truce between Israel and Hamas formally ended.

But at least 57 of the dead are civilians, according to a “conservative” and “rising” tally carried out in hospitals by staff of a UN agency in Gaza, a spokesman said. Two Israelis, both of them civilians, have also been killed in Israel by rocket fire since Saturday, including an Arab-Israeli Bedouin who died yesterday when a Russian-type Grad rocket fired by Hamas struck the construction site where he was working in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. The Grad injured at least 14 others, as Palestinian militants continued to rocket and mortar attacks also yesterday, firing at least 40 at Ashkelon, the town of Sderot and Israeli areas elsewhere near the strip.

In Gaza, the Israeli offensive has thus far injured at least 1,400 more Palestinians, Gaza emergency services chief Mu’awia Hassanein said. He said more than 250 of them were in serious condition and needed urgent transfers to hospitals outside the strip. Hamas, however, is said to have rejected an offer by Cairo to allow the transportation of severely wounded Gazans to Egypt.

A military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said at least 60 targets hit in Gaza early yesterday afternoon since which included the Gaza City office of de-facto Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyah, of Hamas. Residents said a neighbour’s house in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp was hit instead.

Jets also bombed more smuggling tunnels along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, while the Israel Navy shelled Hamas outposts on the coast and inland, she said. AGENCIES

As many as about 40 tunnels, used to smuggle goods and weapons into the strip, were said to have already been destroyed in a matter of minutes when bombed Sunday.

On Monday morning, a Palestinian stabbed and injured three Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Qiryat Sefer, west of Ramallah, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said. An armed paramedic shot and seriously wounded the attacker.

Israeli police were on high alert to prevent further revenge attacks and rioting, after thousands of Arab Israelis and Palestinians, throwing stones and bottles, protested Sunday against the Gaza campaign in East Jerusalem and in such Arab towns as Umm el-Fahm, northern Israel.

Israel launched the deadly and destructive offensive in Gaza after militant factions in Gaza, notably the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, fired more than 180 rockets and mortars at southern Israel in the week after a six-month, Egyptian-brokered truce formally expired December 19.

Since the offensive began late Saturday morning, they fired at

least another 160 rockets and mortars at Israel, the army said, while

a total of more than 300 targets throughout Gaza have been hit.