GAZA CITY: Dozens of civilians were killed yesterday as the Israeli war machine rolled on in the Gaza Strip. The invading Israeli forces bisected the heavily populated strip and surrounded the main city.
Hamas activists fought the advancing Israeli troops with mortars and rockets and said they had captured two soldiers. The Israeli military did not confirm that but said one soldier had been killed and 32 wounded in the ground offensive.
At least 45 Palestinians, almost all civilians, were killed by tank shells or missiles fired from warplanes since the ground offensive began Saturday night.
Over 500 Palestinians have died in Israel’s nine-day war on Gaza. “The number of martyrs has reached at least 500, including 87 children, and more than 2,450 have been wounded,” Moawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza medical emergency services, said.
“The number of the dead can be much higher, since there are many martyrs and wounded in the streets, but we have not been able to get to them,” he said.
Thousands of soldiers in three brigade-size formations pushed into Gaza on Saturday night, beginning a long-awaited ground offensive after a week of intense aerial bombardment. Black smoke billowed over Gaza City at first light as bursts of machine-gun fire rang out.
The invasion and live images of the fighting in Gaza drew international condemnations, but Israel won US backing and moves for an immediate cease-fire foundered at the United Nations.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown echoed grave European concerns when he said the ground offensive was a “very dangerous moment” in the conflict, and he called for increased efforts to rapidly secure a cease-fire.
The offensive was condemned across the Middle East, with Egypt saying the UN Security Council’s silence on Israel’s eight-day campaign had effectively given Israel “a green light” for the ground assault.
Asian nations expressed alarm, too, with Pakistan and China calling for an immediate end to the assault and Muslims in Indonesia urging war against the Jewish state.
An Iranian military commander called on Muslim countries to cut oil exports to Israel’s supporters. The official IRNA news agency quoted Commander Bagherzadeh describing oil as a commodity that could put pressure on Israel’s European and American backers in the “unequal war” faced by the Palestinians.
But in New York, the Security Council failed to agree on a statement calling for a cease-fire after the United States argued that a return to the situation that existed before Israel’s ground invasion was unacceptable.
US Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said after the four-hour sitting that Washington believed it was important that the region “not return to the status quo” that had allowed Hamas to fire rockets into Israel.
Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres, who is also Israel’s president, ruled out a cease-fire and said: “We don’t intend either to occupy Gaza or to crush Hamas, but to crush terror. And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it.”
— With input from agencies
