(PHOTO LINK AT END OF ARTICLE) The IDF is “ready to go all the way,” Israel’s Air Force chief said Monday night, as operation “Cast Lead” entered its fourth day. IDF officials are waiting for the green light to embark on a ground incursion, which may be unavoidable in light of the latest escalation in fighting.
The Air Force attacked Palestinian targets across the Gaza Strip overnight, with eyewitnesses reporting that fighter jets dropped at least 16 bombs on Hamas government buildings and security compounds, destroying them completely. At least 10 people were reportedly killed in the strikes and more than 40 were injured.
As the IDF enters its fourth day of Operation Cast Lead, approximately 350 Palestinians have been killed, and close to 1000 injured in the IAF “shock-and-awe” bombing campaign which began on Shabbos.
PHOTO LINK: Click HERE to see photos [MANY OF THEM GRAPHIC IMAGES] taken during the third day of the “War in the South”.
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remember ever arab has names, so cut the # in 1/2
e.g. abu Mazen/Abbas
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No Early End Seen to ‘All-Out War’ on Hamas in Gaza
By ETHAN BRONNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
Published: December 29, 2008
JERUSALEM — Israel is engaged in an “all-out war with Hamas,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Parliament on Monday as his air force struck at the organization’s civic institutions — the Islamic University, Interior Ministry and presidential guesthouse. The death toll surpassed 350, some 60 of them civilians, according to United Nations officials.
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Tsafrir Abayov/Associated Press
Israeli tanks Monday on the northern border of the Gaza Strip.
White House Puts Onus on Hamas to End Violence (December 28, 2008)
Israelis in Ashkelon took cover on Monday as a siren wailed; a construction worker was killed there by a missile fired from Gaza.
As the conflict passed its third day, with no active diplomacy, there appeared to be no quick end to the largest assault on Gaza in decades.
Israel has defined its aims relatively narrowly, saying it seeks to cripple Hamas’s ability to fire rockets into Israel. It has not made clear if it means to topple the leadership of Hamas, which Israel and the United States brand as a terrorist organization.
Hamas sought to cast its fighters as martyrs in a continuing battle against Israel, the lone resisters in a Palestinian community divided between Gaza, where Hamas rules, and the West Bank, which is governed by the rival Fatah organization.
Hamas killed four Israelis on Monday after firing more than 70 rockets, including a long-range one into the booming city of Ashdod some 18 miles from Gaza, where it hit a bus stop, killing a woman and injuring two other people. Earlier, a rocket hit nearby Ashkelon, killing an Israeli-Arab construction worker and wounding three others. The other dead Israelis, The Associated Press reported, were a civilian in the Negev desert and a soldier.
Thousands of Israelis huddled in shelters as the long-range rockets hit streets or open areas late in the night, the most serious display of Hamas’s arsenal since the Israeli assault began.
In Gaza, where the bombardment continued early Tuesday, residents pulled relatives from the rubble of prominent institutions leveled by waves of Israeli F-16 attacks, as hospitals struggled to keep up with the wounded and the dead and doctors scrambled for supplies. Hamas gunmen publicly shot suspected collaborators with Israel; families huddled around battery-powered radios, desperate for news.
Mr. Barak said that Israel would widen and deepen the attack if necessary and told Israeli lawmakers that it would continue until Hamas no longer had the ability to fire rockets into Israel. Politicians on the left who supported the initial attack urged the government to seek a new cease-fire rather than continue the bombardment.
But the military created a two-mile war cordon along the Gaza border and amassed tanks and troops there, with commanders saying that a ground force invasion was a distinct possibility but had not yet been decided upon.
In Crawford, Tex., a spokesman for President Bush renewed calls for the parties to reach a cease-fire, but said Israel was justified in retaliating against Hamas’s attacks. “Let’s just take this one day at a time,” said the spokesman, Gordon Johndroe.
Allies of Hamas in parts of the Muslim world raised their voices. In Beirut, tens of thousands of Hezbollah supporters stood in pouring rain in protest, and in Tehran a group of influential conservative Iranian clerics began an online registration drive seeking volunteers to fight Israel.
Mr. Barak had told lawmakers that Israel had nothing against the citizens of Gaza and that it had more than once offered its hand in peace to the Palestinian nation. “But we have an all-out war with Hamas and its offshoots,” he said.
Israel sent in some 40 trucks of humanitarian relief, including blood from Jordan and medicine. Egypt opened its border with Gaza to some similar aid and to allow some of the wounded through.
At Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the director, Dr. Hussein Ashour, said that keeping his patients alive from their wounds was an enormous challenge. He said there were some 1,500 wounded people distributed among Gaza’s nine hospitals with far too few intensive care units, equipped ambulances and other vital equipment.
On Monday, Dr. Ashour was not the only official in charge. Armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roamed the halls. Asked their function, they said it was to provide security. But there was internal bloodletting under way.
In the fourth-floor orthopedic section, a woman in her late 20s asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Hajoj was carried out by young men pretending to transfer him to another ward. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head.
Mr. Hajoj, like five others killed at the hospital this way in 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had been in the central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges; when Israel destroyed the prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But their trials were short-circuited.
A crowd at the hospital showed no mercy after the shooting, which was widely observed. A man in his 30s mocked a woman expressing horror at the scene.
“This horrified you?” he shouted. “A collaborator that caused the death of many innocent and resistance fighters?”
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Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza. Dina Kraft contributed reporting from Ashkelon, Israel, and Mark Landler from Washington.
article appeared in print on December 30, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition.
* Obama Defers to Bush, for Now, on Gaza Crisis (December 29, 2008)
* Israeli Troops Mass Along Border; Arab Anger Rises (December 29, 2008)
* NEWS ANALYSIS; Israel Reminds Foes That It Has Teeth (December 29, 2008)
* White House Puts Onus on Hamas to End Violence (December 28, 2008)