from the International Herald Tribune, where the reporters think mosques are reasonable military targets.
GAZA: Warplanes pressing one of the deadliest assaults Israel has ever made on Palestinian "militants" dropped bombs and missiles on a top security installation, a mosque, a TV station and dozens of other targets across the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Sunday.
As the campaign to quash rocket barrages from Gaza entered its second day, some 280 Palestinians had been killed and 600 people wounded, a Gaza health official said. Most of the dead were Hamas police officers.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the campaign that began Saturday could last longer than initially anticipated, and on Sunday the Israeli cabinet approved a limited call-up of Israeli military reserves to help in the attacks on the Gaza Strip, Israeli television said.
Israel launched about 250 airstrikes over the first 24 hours, and infantry and armored units were headed early Sunday to the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion.
Militants, unbowed, kept up the pressure on Israel, firing dozens more rockets and mortars at Israeli border communities. Two rockets struck close to the largest city in southern Israel, Ashdod, some 38 kilometers, or 23 miles, from Gaza, reaching deeper into Israel than ever before. The targeting of Ashdod confirmed Israel's concern that Hamas was capable of putting major cities within rocket range. No injuries were reported.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, a fierce rival of Hamas, urged the Islamic militant group to renew a truce with Israel that had collapsed last week.
Streets were empty in Gaza City on Sunday as most residents stayed home, fearing more airstrikes. A few lined up to buy bread outside two bakeries. Schools were shut for a three-day mourning period that the Gaza government declared for the more than 200 who had died in attacks Saturday.
Aircraft struck one of Hamas's main security compounds in Gaza City - a major symbol of the group's authority. Health officials said four people were killed and 25 wounded in the attack.
A column of black smoke towered from the building, and some inmates of the compound's prison fled after the missiles struck. Hamas police officers captured some of them. Minutes after the strike, officers defiantly planted the movement's green flag in the rubble.
"These strikes fuel our popular support, our military power and the firmness of our positions," said Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas legislator. "We will survive, we will move forward, we will not surrender, we will not be shaken."
A number of governments and international officials, including leaders of Russia, Egypt, the European Union and the United Nations, condemned Israel's use of force and also called on Hamas to end the rocket fire. But the Bush administration blamed Hamas for the violence and demanded that it stop firing rockets.
Early Sunday morning in New York, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement expressing concern about the escalation of the conflict and calling on both parties for an immediate end to all violence. The statement came after envoys of the 15-member council met for more than four hours in closed session.
A military operation had been forecast and demanded by Israeli officials for weeks, ever since the rocky cease-fire between Israel and Hamas fully collapsed more than a week ago, leading again to rocket attacks in large numbers against Israel and isolated Israeli operations in Gaza. The Israeli Army says that Palestinian militants have fired more than 300 rockets and mortars at Israeli targets over the past week, and 10 times that number over the past year.
Still, there was a shocking quality to the Saturday attacks, which began in broad daylight as police cadets were graduating, women were shopping at an outdoor market and children were emerging from school.
The center of Gaza City was a scene of chaotic horror, with rubble everywhere, sirens wailing and women shrieking as dozens of mutilated bodies were laid out on the pavement and in the lobby of Shifa Hospital so that family members could identify them. The dead included civilians, including several construction workers and at least two children in school uniforms.
By afternoon, shops were shuttered, funerals began and mourning tents were visible on nearly every major street of this densely populated city.
The leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, said in a statement that "Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre." Later, in a televised speech, he vowed to fight Israel. "We say in all confidence that even if we are hung on the gallows or they make our blood flow in the streets or they tear our bodies apart, we will bow only before God and we will not abandon Palestine," he said.
In Damascus, Hamas's supreme leader, Khaled Meshal, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television that he was calling for a new Palestinian intifada against Israel, including the resumption of suicide attacks within Israel for the first time since 2005. Hamas, he said, had accepted "all the peaceful options, but without results."
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister and chairman of the Labor Party, said the military operation in Gaza would expand and deepen as necessary, adding, "There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and this is the time for fighting."
"We wanted to attack military targets while the terrorists were inside the facilities and before Hamas was able to get its rockets out that were stored in some of the targets," said a top Israeli security official, briefing a group of reporters by telephone on condition of anonymity.
"Right now, we have to hit Hamas hard to stop the launching," he added. "I don't see any other way for Hamas to change its behavior."
Hamas had made it known in recent weeks that it doubted Israel would engage in a major military undertaking because of its coming elections. But in some ways the elections have made it impossible for officials like Barak not to react. The Israeli public has grown anxious and angry over the rocket fire, which while causing no recent deaths and few injuries is deeply disturbing for those living near Gaza.
Israeli officials said that anyone linked to the Hamas security structure or government was fair game because Hamas was a terrorist group that sought Israel's destruction. But with jobs increasingly scarce in Gaza because of an international embargo on Hamas, young men are tempted by the steady work of the police force without necessarily fully accepting the Hamas ideology. One of the biggest tolls on Saturday was at a police cadet graduation ceremony in which 15 people were killed.
Spokesmen for Hamas officials, who have mostly gone underground, called on militants to seek revenge and fight to the last drop of blood. Several compared what was happening to the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, when Israel reacted to the capture and killing of soldiers along its northern border with air raids, followed by a ground attack. Hezbollah is widely viewed as having withstood those assaults and emerged much stronger politically.
The Arab League initially called an emergency meeting of foreign ministers for Sunday in Cairo, but later postponed it to Wednesday to give ministers time to respond.
The Palestine Liberation Organization, dominated by Abbas's Fatah movement, called a one-day commercial strike throughout the West Bank and urged Palestinians to take to the streets in peaceful protests.
Governments that dislike Hamas, like Egypt's, Jordan's and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, are in a delicate position. They blame Hamas for having taken over Gaza by force 18 months ago after its victory in elections for the Palestinian Parliament, and they oppose its rocket fire on Israeli towns and communities.
But the sight of scores of Palestinians killed by Israeli warplanes outraged their citizens, and anti-Israel demonstrations broke out across the region.
Egypt, worried about possible efforts by Palestinians to enter the country, has set up machine guns along the Gaza border. But on Saturday it temporarily opened the Rafah border crossing in order to allow the wounded to be brought to Egyptian hospitals.
In the West Bank and in some Arab parts of Jerusalem and Israel, Palestinians threw stones, causing injuries.
Hamas is officially committed to Israel's destruction, and after it took over Gaza in 2007, it said it would not recognize Israel, honor previous Palestinian Authority commitments to it or end its violence against Israelis.
Israel, backed by the United States, Europe, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, has sought to isolate Hamas by squeezing Gaza economically, a policy that human rights groups condemn as collective punishment. Israel and Egypt, which control routes into and out of Gaza, have blocked nearly all but humanitarian aid from going in.
The result has been the near death of the Gazan economy. While enough food has gone in to avoid starvation, the level of suffering is very high and getting worse each week, especially in recent weeks as Israel closed the routes entirely for about 10 days in reaction to daily rocket fire.
Opening the routes to commerce was Hamas's main goal in its cease-fire with Israel, just as ending the rocket fire was Israel's central aim. But while rocket firings did go down to 15 to 20 a month from hundreds a month, Israel said it would not permit trade to begin again because the rocket fire had not completely stopped and because Hamas continued to smuggle weapons from Egypt through desert tunnels. Hamas said this was a violation of the agreement, a sign of Israel's real intentions and cause for further rocket fire. On Wednesday alone, some 70 rockets from Gaza hit Israel.
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