At least 310 Palestinians killed as Israel readies more tanks, artillery
 Majed Hamdan / AP Palestinian rescue workers carry a wounded prisoner in the rubble of the Saraya prison after it was hit by a missile strike on Sunday. |
Israeli leaders said they would press ahead with the Gaza campaign, despite international criticism and enraged protests across the Arab world. Israel's foreign minister said the goal was to permanently halt the barrages of rocket fire from Gaza that have targeted civilians in growing swaths of Israel's south, but not to reoccupy the Palestinian territory.
Early Monday, Israeli aircraft bombed the Islamic University and a central government compound in Gaza City, centers of Hamas power. Witnesses saw fire and smoke at the university, counting six separate airstrikes there just after midnight.
 Mohammed Salem / Reuters Palestinians look at a destroyed mosque after an Israeli air strike in Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday. |
At first light Monday, strong winds blew black smoke from the bombed sites in Gaza City over deserted streets. The air hummed with the buzz of pilotless drones and the roar of jets, punctuated by the explosions of new airstrikes. Gaza officials counted at least 310 dead.
Hamas fired missiles deeper than ever into Israel, hitting near the Israeli port city of Ashdod, and the Islamic organization continues to command some 20,000 fighters.
Unprecedented destruction
Yet Hamas leaders were forced underground, most of the dead were from the Hamas security forces, and Israel's military intelligence chief said Hamas' ability to fire rockets had been reduced by 50 percent. Indeed, Hamas rocket fire dropped off sharply, from more than 130 on Saturday to just over 20 on Sunday.
Israel's intense bombings — some 300 air strikes since midday Saturday — wreaked unprecedented destruction in Gaza, reducing entire buildings to rubble.
On Sunday, crowds of Gazans breached the border wall with Egypt in an apparent attempt to escape the chaos. Egyptian forces, some firing in the air, tried to push them back into Gaza and an official said one border guard was killed.
Late Sunday, Israeli aircraft attacked a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp next to Gaza City, killing five people, including a woman and her three daughters, one of them a 14-month-old toddler, Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said. In the southern town of Rafah, Palestinians said a toddler and his two teenage brothers were killed in an airstrike aimed at a Hamas commander, and in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City a strike killed a man and his wife.
Shlomo Brom, a former senior Israeli military official, said it was the deadliest force ever used in decades of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
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In the most dramatic attacks Sunday, warplanes struck dozens of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, cutting off a lifeline that had supplied Hamas with weapons and Gaza with commercial goods. The influx of goods helped Hamas defy an 18-month blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, and was key to propping up its rule.
Gaza's nine hospitals were overwhelmed. Hassanain, who keeps a record for the Gaza Health Ministry, said at least 310 people had been killed and over 1,400 wounded over two days of fighting, and that casualties were being taken to private clinics and even homes.
Across Gaza, families pitched traditional mourning tents of green tarp outside homes. Yet the rows of chairs inside these tents remained largely empty, as residents cowered indoors for fear of new Israeli strikes.
6,500 reservists called up
In Jerusalem, Israel's Cabinet approved a call-up of 6,500 reserve soldiers in apparent preparation for a ground offensive, in addition to several hundred reservists who have already been summoned to join their units. The final decision to call up more reserves has yet to be made by the defense minister, Ehud Barak, and the Cabinet decision could be a pressure tactic.
Israel has doubled the number of troops on the Gaza border since Saturday and also deployed an artillery battery. It was not clear, though, whether the deployment was meant to intimidate Hamas or whether Israel is in fact determined to send in ground troops.
Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year military occupation, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the territory to hunt militants firing rockets at Israeli towns, but has shied away from retaking the entire strip for fear of getting bogged down in urban warfare.
Military experts said Israel would need at least 10,000 soldiers for a full-scale invasion.
The diplomatic fallout, meanwhile, was swift. Syria decided to suspend indirect peace talks with Israel, begun earlier this year. "Israel's aggression closes all the doors" to any move toward a settlement in the region, said a Syrian announcement.
The U.N. Security Council called on both sides to halt the fighting and asked Israel to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel to open its crossings "for the continuous provision of humanitarian supplies." In a statement, he said eight U.N. trainees and one staffer have been killed.
Gaza border official Raed Fattouh said Israel informed him that two key crossings would be open Monday to allow in fuel and aid supplies.
The prime minister of Turkey, one of the few Muslim countries to have relations with Israel, called the air assault a "crime against humanity," and French President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned "the provocations that led to this situation as well as the disproportionate use of force."
The carnage inflamed Arab and Muslim public opinion, setting off street protests across the West Bank, in an Arab community in Israel, in several Middle Eastern cities and in Paris.
Some of the protests turned violent. Israeli troops quelling a West Bank march killed one Palestinian and seriously wounded another. A crowd of anti-Israel protesters in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul became a target for a suicide bomber on a bicycle. In Lebanon, police fired tear gas to stop demonstrators from reaching the Egyptian Embassy.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit called on Hamas to renew its truce with Israel. The cease-fire began unraveling last month, and formally ended more than a week ago.
Since then, Gaza militants have stepped up rocket fire on Israel.
A Hamas leader in exile, Osama Hamdan, said the movement would not relent. "We have one alternative which is to be steadfast and resist and then we will be victorious," Hamdan said in Beirut.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it was unclear when the Gaza operation would end but told his Cabinet was "liable to last longer than we are able to foresee at this time."
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in cities and towns in Gaza rocket range. Schools in communities in a 12-mile radius from Gaza were ordered to remain closed beyond the weeklong Jewish holiday of Hanukkah which ends Monday.
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