Death toll rises as Israel pounds Gaza for second day

Israel pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip from the air yesterday for a second day and prepared for a possible invasion after killing at least 296 Palestinians in the opening rounds of a fierce offensive.

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

Despite the assault, militants fired some 80 rockets into Israel, emergency services said. Two rockets struck near Ashdod, a port 30 kilometres 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 a February 10 election, appeared to rule out a large-scale invasion to restore 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, Ms Livni replied: "Not now".

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr 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, a network that is a lifeline to the outside world.

Dozens of Gazans crossed into Egypt through holes opened in the border wall by bulldozers and explosives and Palestinian gunmen exchanged fire with Egyptian police who tried to stop the influx, witnesses said. Gaza hospitals said they treated 10 people wounded in the shooting.

Israeli bombs destroyed Hamas's southern headquarters and medical officials said several people were wounded.

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.

Ms 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 political risk of reoccupying the Gaza Strip ahead of an election, were trying to bolster Israel'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 UN Security Council called on all sides to cease fire. But 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. Schools in Israel's south, due to reopen tomorrow after the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, were ordered to stay shut.

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

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

Palestinian officials said 10 trucks of flour and medical supplies entered through an Israeli border terminal yesterday.