GAZA CITY (Gaza Strip) - ISRAEL'S air force obliterated symbols of Hamas power on the third day of its overwhelming Gaza assault on Monday, striking a house next to the Hamas premier's home, devastating a security compound and flattening a five-story building at a university closely linked to the Islamic group.
Israel's defense minister said his military is fighting a 'war to the bitter end' against Hamas.
RIYAD - SAUDI Arabia has sent two hospital aircraft
staffed with medical personnel to Gaza to help with the injured from Israel's attacks on the Palestinian territory and to carry any severely injured patients to hospitals inside Saudi Arabia for treatment, the government said on Monday.
The two Medevac (medical evacuation) aircraft departed Riyadh Air Base for Al-Areesh airport, carrying representatives from the Saudi Red Crescent Society
and other medical personnel, medical equipment and supplies to treat those injured in the attacks, the state news agency SPA said.
NICOSIA (Cyprus) - A GROUP of international activists says it will defy an Israeli blockade and send a boat with medical supplies to war-hit Gaza from Cyprus.
Free Gaza Group spokesman Caoimhe Butterly says their 20-metre yacht Dignity will leave Larnaca port around 5 pm (10 pm Singapore time) on Monday with 3.5 tons of donated supplies.
JERUSALEM - DEFENCE Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that Israel was in an 'all-out war against Hamas' as the Jewish state continued its massive bombardment of the Islamist movement's installations in Gaza.
'We have nothing against Gaza residents, but we are engaged in an all-out war against Hamas and its proxies,' he said.
MUSCAT - GULF leaders gathered in the Omani capital Muscat on Monday for an annual summit that is set to be clouded by differences over Israel's three-day-old onslaught against the Gaza Strip.
Qatar agreed to host an emergency Arab summit on the crisis in Doha on Friday and the meeting was announced in Cairo after talks among Arab League ambassadors on Saturday.
DAMASCUS - A SENIOR exiled Hamas official has
rejected any talk of a new truce with Israel unless all attacks on Gaza cease and the border crossings are reopened.
Mr Moussa Abu Marzouk has told The Associated Press in an interview in Damascus that Palestinian militants have a right to strike everywhere in Israel in response to its deadly assault on Gaza.
The three-day death toll rose to 315, including seven children under the age of 15 who were killed in two separate strikes late Sunday and Monday, medics said. Israel launched its campaign, the deadliest against Palestinians in decades, on Saturday in retaliation for rocket fire aimed at civilians in southern Israeli towns.
The strikes appear to have gravely damaged Hamas' ability to launch rockets, but barrages continued. One medium-range rocket fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon killed an Arab construction worker there Monday and wounded several others. He was the second Israeli killed since the beginning of the offensive, and the first person ever to be killed by a rocket in Ashkelon, a city of 120,000.
On Sunday, Hamas missiles struck for the first time near the city of Ashdod, twice as far from Gaza as Ashkelon and only 40 kilometres from Israel's heart in Tel Aviv.
At first light on Monday, strong winds blew black smoke from the bombed sites in Gaza City over deserted streets. The air hummed with the buzz of pilotless drones and the roar of jets, punctuated by the explosions of new airstrikes.
Most of those killed since Saturday were members of Hamas security forces, though the precise numbers remain unclear. The UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees said at least 51 of the dead were civilians. A rise in civilian casualties could intensify international pressure on Israel to abort the offensive.
Israel's intense bombings - more than 300 air strikes since midday Saturday - wreaked unprecedented destruction in Gaza, reducing buildings to rubble. The military said naval vessels also bombarded targets from the sea.
One strike destroyed a five-story building in the women's wing at Islamic University, one of the most prominent Hamas symbols in Gaza.
Other attacks ravaged a compound controlled by Preventive Security, one of the group's chief security arms, and destroyed a house next to the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister. Like other Hamas leaders, Haniyeh is in hiding.
Late Sunday, Israeli aircraft attacked a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp next to Gaza City, killing a woman, a toddler and three young teenage girls, Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said.
In the southern town of Rafah, a toddler and his two teenage brothers were killed in an airstrike aimed at a Hamas commander, Dr Hassanain said. In Gaza City, another attack killed a man and his wife. Some families left their apartments next to institutions linked to Hamas, fearing they could be targeted.
Mrs Suad Abu Wadi, 42, was keeping her six children close to her on mattresses in her Gaza City living room. Her husband sat with them, chain-smoking. Mr Abu Wadi said he had not said a word since seeing their neighbor carrying the body of his child, killed in an airstrike on Saturday.
Mr Abdel Hafez, a 55-year-old history teacher, waited outside a Gaza City bakery to buy bread. He said he was not a Hamas supporter, but believed the strikes would only increase support for the group.
'Each strike, each drop of blood are giving Hamas more fuel to continue,' he said.
Mr Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, told Israel's parliament in a special session that Israel was not fighting the residents of Gaza. 'But we have a war to the bitter end against Hamas and its branches,' he told a special session of parliament.
Mr Barak said the goal is to deal Hamas a severe blow and that the operation would be 'widened and deepened as needed.'
Israel began Saturday's assault by targeting Hamas security installations. Since then, it's widened the attacks and on Sunday struck dozens of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, cutting off a lifeline that had supplied Hamas with weapons and Gaza with commercial goods. The influx of goods helped Hamas defy an 18-month blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, and was key to propping up its rule.
Gaza's nine hospitals were overwhelmed. Hassanain, who keeps a record for the Gaza Health Ministry, said over 1,400 were wounded over two days of fighting, and that casualties were now being taken to private clinics and even homes. A Hamas police spokesman, Ehab Ghussein, said 180 members of the Hamas security forces were among the dead.
In Israel, 17 people have been killed in attacks from Gaza since the beginning of the year, including nine civilians and eight soldiers, according to Israel's Foreign Ministry.
In Jerusalem, Israel's Cabinet approved a call-up of 6,500 reserve soldiers on Sunday in apparent preparation for a ground offensive. The final decision to call up reserves has yet to be made by the defense minister, and the Cabinet decision could be a pressure tactic.
Israel has doubled the number of troops on the Gaza border since Saturday and also deployed an artillery battery. Several hundred reservists have already been summoned to join their units, but no full combat formations have been mobilized so far.
Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year military occupation, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the territory to hunt militants firing rockets at Israeli towns. But it has shied away from retaking the entire strip for fear of getting bogged down in urban warfare.
Military experts said Israel would need at least 10,000 soldiers for a full-scale invasion.
The assault has sparked diplomatic fallout. Syria decided to suspend indirect peace talks with Israel, begun earlier this year.
The UN Security Council called on both sides to halt the fighting and asked Israel to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza. Israel opened one of Gaza's border crossings on Monday and about 40 trucks had entered with food and medical supplies by mid-day, military spokesman Peter Lerner said.
The prime minister of Turkey, one of the few Muslim countries to have relations with Israel, called the air assault a 'crime against humanity,' and French President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned 'the provocations that led to this situation as well as the disproportionate use of force.'
The carnage inflamed Arab and Muslim public opinion, setting off street protests in Arab communities in Israel and the West Bank, across the Arab world, and in some European cities.
Some of the protests turned violent. Israeli troops quelling a West Bank march Sunday killed one Palestinian and seriously wounded another.
On Monday, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded four Israelis in a West Bank settlement before he was shot and wounded. It was not immediately clear if the attack was directly connected to the events in Gaza. -- AP
