By David Pratt, Foreign Editor
ISRAELI warplanes and helicopters pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip yesterday in unprecedented waves of air strikes that killed at least 208 people and wounded 400 more. It was one of the single bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.
Israel says the air strikes were in response to rocket attacks by militants in Gaza which have continued since a six-month-old truce with Hamas expired just over a week ago.
A senior Israeli military source insisted the strikes marked the "opening stage" of a campaign that could be expanded to include ground forces surrounding Gaza.
"We should be prepared for an ongoing operation that may last for a long time," the source said. "We don't have time limits for that and we are determined to go all the way if needed with all of our options, air, ground, whatever."
Most of those killed in Gaza were security men, but an unknown number of civilians were also among the dead. Hamas said all its security installations were hit and threatened to resume suicide attacks.
Black smoke billowed over Gaza City, where the dead and wounded lay scattered on the ground after Israel bombed more than 40 security compounds, including two where Hamas was hosting graduation ceremonies for new recruits. At the main Gaza City graduation ceremony, uniformed bodies lay in a pile and the wounded writhed in pain. Some rescue workers beat their heads and shouted "God is great". One badly wounded man quietly recited verses from the Koran.
Israel said the operation, dubbed Solid Lead, targeted "terrorist infrastructure" following days of rocket attacks on southern Israel which in the past few days have killed one Israeli man and wounded several others.
Asked if Hamas political leaders might be targeted, military spokeswoman Major Avital Leibovich said: "Any Hamas target is a target."
In Gaza itself the Israeli strikes caused widespread panic and confusion. Some of the Israeli missiles hit densely populated areas as children were leaving school.
Said Masri sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, close to a security compound, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the bombed-out building.
"My son is gone, my son is gone," wailed Masri, 57. The shopkeeper said he sent his nine-year-old son out for cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. "May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn," Masri moaned.
The first round of air strikes came just before noon. Hospitals were crowded with people and civilians rushed in wounded people in cars, vans and ambulances. "There are heads without bodies ... There's blood in the corridors. People are weeping, women are crying, doctors are shouting, " said nurse Ahmed Abdel Salaam of Shifa Hospital, Gaza's main treatment centre.
Some of the dead, rolled in blankets, were laid out on the hospital floor for identification. Gaza hospitals said they were running out of medical supplies because of the Israeli-led blockade, increasing the chances that the death toll will rise. Aid groups said they feared the Israeli operation could fuel a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal enclave, home to 1.5 million P, half of them dependent on food aid.
Hamas estimated that at least 100 members of its security forces had been killed, including police chief Tawfiq Jabber and the head of Hamas's security and protection unit. The Islamist group, which won a 2006 parliamentary election but was shunned by Western powers over its refusal to renounce violence and recognise Israel, said all of its security compounds in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or seriously damaged.
Hamas threatened to unleash "hell" to avenge the dead, including possible suicide bombings inside Israel.
"We will not leave our land, we will not raise white flags and we will not kneel except before God," said Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas's government in the Gaza Strip. "Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre."
Palestinians staged protest rallies in Arab East Jerusalem and in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Hebron, leading to scuffles with Israeli forces. The most violent West Bank response came in Hebron, where dozens of youths hurled rocks for hours at Israeli forces, who lobbed tear gas and stun grenades in response.
Officials in Bethlehem, traditional birthplace of Jesus, turned off Christmas lights, and traders shuttered their shops to protest the Israeli attack.
In Amman, several hundred Jordanians protested outside a UN complex in the capital Amman. "Hamas, go ahead. You are the cannon, we are the bullets," they cried. In Ein al-Hilweh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, dozens of youths hit the streets and set fire to tyres. In Syria's al-Yarmouk camp outside Damascus, Palestinian protesters vowed to continue fighting Israel.
In the West Bank, Hamas's rival, President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads secular Fatah forces, said the Israeli air campaign was "criminal" and urged world powers to intervene. Abbas, who has ruled only the West Bank since the Islamic Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007, was in contact with Arab leaders, and his West Bank Cabinet convened an emergency session.
Israeli analyst Ron Ben-Yishai meanwhile said the strike was "shock treatment ... aimed at securing a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on terms that are favourable to Israel".
Israeli political leaders are also under pressure however to stop the rocket attacks as the country's February 10 election approaches.
"There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and now the time has come to fight," said Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Before the day was out Gaza militants had fired 30 rockets and mortars into Israel after the air offensive began, killing an Israeli man and wounding four people, rescue services said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a leading candidate to become Israel's next prime minister, called for international support against "an extremist Islamist organisation ... that is being supported by Iran."
Past limited ground incursions and air strikes by Israeli forces have not halted rocket barrages from Gaza. But with 200 mortars and rockets raining down on Israel since the truce expired a week ago, and 3000 since the beginning of the year, according to the military's count, pressure had been mounting in Israel for the military to crush the gunmen.
The US appeared to put the onus on Hamas to prevent a further escalation. "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "The ceasefire should be restored immediately."
Israel has targeted Gaza in the past, but the number of simultaneous attacks yesterday was unprecedented. Israel left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, but the withdrawal did not lead to better relations with Palestinians in the territory as Israeli officials had hoped.Instead, the evacuation was followed by a sharp rise in militant attacks on Israeli border communities that on several occasions provoked harsh Israeli reprisals.
The last, in late February and early March, spurred both sides to agree to a truce that was to have lasted six months but began to unravel in early November.
