Israel tanks forge deeper into Gaza as crisis spirals
14 minutes ago
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Israeli tanks moved deeper into the northern Gaza Strip after Islamist militants launched a second rocket attack on the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon.
The move came after Israel's security cabinet authorised the army to advance farther and to step up attacks on the Hamas-led government.
Witnesses told AFP up to 15 Israeli tanks pushed into an industrial zone in the north of the strip, advancing several hundred metres.
They entered the sites of the two former Israeli settlements of Elei Sinai and Nissanit near the Erez border crossing point, the sources said.
An AFP photographer at the scene reported heavy machinegun and mortar fire.
Earlier, a rocket crashed into an open area of Ashkelon without causing damage or casualties, military sources said.
It was the second Palestinian rocket attack on the Israeli town in two days.
In Washington, meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was "high time" for Hamas to return an Israeli soldier whose capture sparked the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.
She called on both the Israelis and the Palestinians to exercise restraint.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet ordered the military to intensify air raids against Hamas as well as so-called targeted killing operations against militants who launch or order rocket attacks.
The army was also given the go-ahead to surround two key towns in northern Gaza and enlarge an interdiction zone to be enforced by aircraft and artillery in a bid to stave off rocket attacks.
The decisions followed the most spectacular operation against Israel since a soldier was captured 10 days ago, plunging the Middle East into fresh crisis, when Hamas militants fired a new type of rocket Tuesday into the heart of Ashkelon.
The first Palestinian rocket ever to hit the centre of the southern coastal town ploughed into a school, causing no injuries but drawing furious calls for retribution from members of the Israeli government.
"The goals we have set forth remain: releasing the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit and stopping projectile fire," a security cabinet statement said.
As a result, the cabinet instructed the defence establishment to prepare "for prolonged and graduated security activity".
The goals of the campaign were described as "damaging Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, with an emphasis on institutions and terror infrastructure," and "reducing terrorists' freedom of movement by continuing to section off the Gaza Strip and striking at infrastructures that serve terrorism".
Olmert himself branded the first rocket attack on Ashkelon an "unprecedented and severe escalation in the terrorist war being waged by Hamas" which he warned would have "far-reaching consequences".
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said Israel's plans to enlarge an interdiction zone in northern Gaza would only make matters worse.
"Israel is using the recent developments as a pretext to impose faits accomplis. A security zone will not solve the problem, but on the contrary, help further the escalation and complications," Erekat said.
The EU cautioned that the army's operations had delayed efforts to get much-needed funding to the Palestinian people, as 1.4 million people living in impoverished Gaza Strip grapple with food, fuel and power cuts.
But repeated international calls for restraint have largely fallen on deaf ears in what has become the worst Middle East crisis since Hamas came to power in March and Olmert formally took the Israeli helm in May.
Overnight Tuesday, Israeli warplanes attacked the Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza City for the second time in a week, causing heavy damage and wounding four Palestinians, local medical sources said.
Israeli aircraft also pounded other targets in Gaza for the eighth consecutive night.
The return of ground troops to what is one of the most densely populated areas on earth comes less than 10 months after Israel withdrew from the territory last September following a 38-year occupation.
Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, a member of Israel's security cabinet, said "systematic operations to liquidate terrorist chiefs" were the only possible response unless Palestinians halted their rocket attacks.
But claiming responsibility for Tuesday's rocket strike, the armed wing of Hamas vowed to step up its attacks after Israel rejected a prisoner swap and pressed on with its Gaza offensive.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said it used a "new type of rocket" with a longer range than those fired daily at Israel in recent days, promising "a new era of violence" if the Jewish state did not stop its military operation.
Rice said Hamas carried more blame for the upsurge of tensions and pressed for the captured Israeli soldier's release.
"Their government, Hamas government, needs to respond to the root cause of this problem, and the root cause of this problem was the attack that took place and the Israeli soldier that was abducted," she said.
"It is high time for Hamas to return that soldier. It is high time then for everybody who has any influence on Hamas to make sure that that happens, and then we can get back on track."
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian militant of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a rival faction to the Qassam Brigades, and who was wanted for killing two Israelis in 2000.
Following the expiry Tuesday of an ultimatum set the Palestinian captors of 19-year-old Israeli soldier Gilad Shalid, Olmert again ruled out negotiations with militants and promised to strike anyone linked to them, in a thinly veiled reference to Syria.
Israel said Shalit remained alive after being seized and wounded 10 days ago in a Palestinian raid.
The shadowy Army of Islam, one of three groups that claims to be holding Shalit in the Gaza Strip, said Tuesday he would not be killed.
The group, together with the armed wing of the governing Hamas movement and the Popular Resistance Committees, snatched him in a raid on an army post on June 25 in which two other soldiers and two militants were killed.
The prime minister of the Hamas-led government, Ismail Haniya, said his administration continued to appeal for the soldier's life and good treatment.
Israel tanks forge deeper into Gaza as crisis spirals
