GAZA CITY - ISRAEL blitzed Hamas targets in Gaza on Saturday with a wave of air strikes that killed at least 155 people in the besieged enclave in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire, officials said.
An Israeli man died as Hamas swiftly responded to the air raids by firing rockets into the Jewish state.
Arab world condemns Israeli attack on Gaza
CAIRO (Egypt) - THE Arab world reacted in shock to the attacks on the Gaza Strip on Saturday with scattered protests around the region and Egypt summoning the Israeli ambassador to express its condemnation of the air strikes.
In a statement from the president's office, Egypt condemned Israel's attacks and held it responsible for those killed and wounded and called for renewed efforts to restore the truce with Hamas.
BRUSSELS - THE French presidency of the European Union called on Saturday for an immediate halt to Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and rocket fire against Israel from Gaza, where Israeli air strikes were reported to have killed at least 155 Palestinians.
The EU presidency 'expresses greatest concern at the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and deplores the very large number of civilian victims,' a statement said.
Abbas in 'urgent contact' with other states over Gaza strikes
RAMALLAH (West Bank)- PALESTINIAN president Mahmud Abbas said on Saturday that he was in 'urgent contact' with numerous countries over the deadly Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
'We have carried out urgent contacts with numerous Arab countries and other nations to stop the cowardly aggressions and massacres in the Gaza Strip,' Mr Abbas told AFP from Saudi Arabia which he is currently visiting.
WACO (Texas) - THE United States urged Israel on Saturday to avoid civilian casualties as it pounded Hamas targets in Gaza, but warned the Islamist movement must halt its rocket attacks 'if the violence is to stop.'
'The United States urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza,' US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in
Waco, as US President George W. Bush closed out 2008 on his Texas ranch.
LONDON - BRITAIN said on Saturday it was deeply concerned by Israeli air strikes reported to have killed at least 155 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and called for maximum restraint from both sides.
'We are deeply concerned by the reports of deaths and injuries of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip following the recent Israeli air strikes,' a
Foreign Office spokesman said.
JEUSALEM - ISRAEL'S air attack on the Gaza Strip on Saturday could signal a return to a much higher level of violence in the conflict with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas after nine months of lower-level confrontations.
The peace process with Israel, already in a coma in the last days of George W. Bush's presidency in the United States, could be killed off by renewed violence.
THE following timeline presents some of the main events in 60 years of conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and Arab countries since the founding of the Jewish state.
State of Israel declared in May 1948. British troops leave and fighting breaks out with Arab neighbours. Some 700,000 Palestinians, half the Arab population of British-ruled Palestine, fled or were driven from their homes. Arab troops intervened but lost some of the land the United Nations had assigned to Palestinians. Armistice pacts halted the fighting a year later but there was no formal peace.
As Israel warned that the bombardment was 'just the beginnning,' Hamas told Israelis living near their Gaza stronghold to 'prepare the funeral shrouds.'
In Gaza, thick clouds of smoke billowed into the sky and mangled, bloody, charred corpses littered the pavement around Hamas security structures in the coastal strip where the bombardment sowed panic in the streets, television images showed.
The deadly attacks came after days of escalating violence around the besieged coastal strip that the Islamist Hamas movement has run since June 2007, with militants firing rockets and Israel vowing a fiery response.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told AFP from Saudi Arabia that he was in 'urgent contact' with numerous countries to stop 'the cowardly aggressions and massacres in the Gaza Strip.' The bombardment sparked international calls for a stop to the violence, with Russia, France and the European Union calling for an end to the bloodletting by both sides.
Egypt, which brokered a six-month Israeli-Hamas truce that expired on December 19, slammed the Israeli strikes.
'Egypt condemns the Israeli military aggression on the Gaza Strip and blames Israel, as an occupying force, for the victims and the wounded,' President Hosni Mubarak said in a statement.
He gave instructions for the Rafah terminal - the only one that bypasses Israel - to be opened to allow wounded Palestinians to be evacuated 'so they can receive the necessary treatment in Egyptian hospitals,' it added.
Hamas called on its fighters to 'avenge with force against the enemy' while its militants warned Israelis living near the border to 'prepare the funeral shrouds,' vowing that the Islamists' response 'was on its way.'
Israel, which put its communities around Gaza on a state of alert, warned the deadly strikes were 'just the beginning,' said an army spokesman.
'The operation will continue and will be expanded as necessary in accordance with the assessments of the army and the defence establishment,' said a statement from Defence Minister Ehud Barak's office.
The Israeli onslaught was launched 'following... the incessant attacks on Israeli citizens in the south of the country....' and was aimed to 'bring the rocket fire to an end,' said a statement from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office.
An army spokesman said that Israeli warplanes had carried out the strikes 'to stop the terrorist attacks of the past several weeks against Israeli civilian installations.'
'We had warned the civilian population in the Gaza Strip of our attacks and Hamas, which hides within this population, is solely responsible for this situation,' he told AFP.
Saturday's bombardments hit and destroyed Hamas security structures across the Gaza Strip, the group said. A training base of its military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, was pounded in the north of the territory.
The mid-morning air raids followed days of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel by militants inside Gaza, which the Jewish state had warned would be met with harsh reprisals.
Violence in and around the Gaza Strip has flared since the ceasefire ended, and escalated dramatically on Wednesday when militants fired more than 80 rockets and mortar rounds in response to air strikes over the coastal strip.
Israel had responded to earlier rocket attacks by tightening the blockade it imposed after Hamas violently seized power in Gaza in June 2007.
However dozens of truckloads of supplies were delivered to Gaza on Friday after Israel decided to temporarily allow in humanitarian aid.
Hamas is sworn to destruction of the Jewish state and has warned that it would retaliate by resuming suicide bombings inside Israel. The last such attack claimed by Hamas was in January 2005. -- AFP
