Israel stepped up its land offensive in Gaza with artillery, tanks and gunboats yesterday and declared it could “significantly widen” an operation Palestinian officials said was killing ever greater numbers of civilians.
Israeli gunboats lit up the sky with their fire before dawn while helicopters fired into the coastal enclave. Hamas fired mortar rounds at the invading troops and rockets across the border at the southern Israeli towns of Ashdod and Ashkelon.
“We chose to start this operation after we exhausted other options and reached the conclusion that without it we could pay a much higher price,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters before a special cabinet session at Tel Aviv military headquarters.
“My instructions...to the Israeli army, with the approval of the security cabinet, is to prepare for the possibility of a widening, a significant widening of the ground operation.”
He did not say what form a widened operation might take.
Palestinian health officials said 27 Palestinians, including a baby, two children and a 70-year-old woman, had been killed since Israel poured ground forces into the densely-populated strip of 1.8 million Palestinians on Thursday.
The action followed 10 days of barrages against Gaza from air and sea and hundreds of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel.
Israel says its forces have focused on seeking out tunnels Palestinian militants might use for cross-border raids.
One such infiltration was narrowly thwarted on Thursday, with the army saying it had repelled 13 Hamas gunmen after they emerged from a tunnel close to an Israeli farming community.
To back up regular forces, Israel is calling up 18,000 military reservists, adding to the 30,000 already mobilised.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri responded with defiance to the Israeli escalation, saying: “Netanyahu is killing our children and will pay the price. The ground invasion doesn’t frighten us and the occupation army will sink in Gaza’s mud.”
Hamas wants Israel and Egypt, whose military-backed government is at odds with the Palestinian Islamists, to lift border restrictions that have deepened Gaza’s economic hardship and unemployment.
SMOKESCREENS, REFUGEES
Israel said one of its soldiers was killed and several others wounded in Gaza clashes yesterday.
In all, 258 Palestinians, most of them civilians, had been killed since the fighting began on July 8, Gaza officials said.
Dozens of Palestinian families, forewarned by evacuation notices made by Israel fled toward the interior, leaving empty streets.
Among yesterday’s fatalities were three teenage brothers, who medics said were shelled by an Israeli tank inside their house, at a residential building in Beit Lahiya, a northern town.
Though they are die-hard foes, Israel says it does not intend to topple Hamas, the dominant Islamist force in Gaza.
Live television showed rockets shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome interceptor.
Israeli media said the army appeared to be probing northern and southern frontier zones for cross-border tunnels, Palestinian command bunkers and buried rocket silos.
A soldier was Israel’s second fatality in eleven days of fighting. A rocket attack killed a civilian two days ago.
Hostilities Surge
Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said Israel had killed 14 Palestinian gunmen in “exchanges of fire throughout Gaza.”
Hamas said its fighters had repelled Israeli forces in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, wounding seven soldiers.
Israel calls the Gaza offensive a response to mounting rocket salvoes fired by the Palestinians.
Hostilities were stoked by the killing of three Israeli teens in the occupied West Bank last month and the death on July 2 of a Palestinian youth in a suspected revenge murder.
Israel briefly held fire on Tuesday after Egypt, which also borders Gaza, announced a truce plan; but Hamas and other militants balked saying their conditions had not been addressed.
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking after the announcement of the ground assault, implored Israel to do more to stop Palestinian civilian deaths.
