Across Gaza, families huddled indoors as Israeli jets streaked overhead. Residents said there were long electricity blackouts and that they had no cooking gas. Some ventured out to receive rationed bread at bakeries or to brave the streets to claim their dead at hospitals. There were few mass funerals; rather, families buried the dead in small ceremonies.
At dusk yesterday, Israeli fighter jets bombed more than 40 tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt. The Israeli military said the tunnels that were attacked, on the Gaza side of the border, were used for smuggling weapons, explosives and fugitives. Gazans also use many of them to import consumer goods and fuel to get around the Israeli-imposed economic blockade.
During the past two days, Israeli jets have destroyed at least 30 targets in Gaza, including the main security compound and prison in Gaza City, known as the Saraya, metal workshops throughout Gaza that are suspected of manufacturing rockets, and Hamas military posts.
Shlomo Brom, a former senior Israeli military official, said it was the deadliest force ever used in decades of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
"Since Hamas took over Gaza [in June 2007], it has become a war between two states, and in war between states, more force is used," he said.
Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, after 38 years of military occupation, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the territory to hunt militants. However, Israel has shied away from retaking the entire strip, for fear of getting bogged down in urban warfare.
Hamas said Israel bombed a government ministry compound and Gaza's Islamic University, an important symbol and training ground, late last night. The Hamas-owned television station Al-Aqsa was hit, as was a mosque that the Israeli military said was being used as a terrorist base.
Israel appeared to be settling in for a longer haul. In Jerusalem, Israel's Cabinet approved a call-up of 6,500 reserve soldiers, raising fears of an impending ground offensive. Israel has doubled the number of troops on the Gaza border since Saturday and also deployed an artillery battery. It was not clear, though, whether the deployment was meant to pressure Hamas or whether Israel is determined to send ground troops.
Speaking before the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, said the army "will deepen and broaden its actions as needed" and "will continue to act." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel's goal was not to reoccupy Gaza, which it left unilaterally in 2005, but to "restore normal life and quiet to residents of the south."
