Gaza : Specter of a ground offensive

Israel engaged in a "horible war " against Hamas targets attacked Monday the Islamist movement for the 3rd day in the Gaza Strip, where its attacks have caused more than 300 dead including many civilians, as is the prospect of ground attacks. In Israel, rockets fired by fighters of Hamas from the Gaza Strip caused one death and eight wounded in Ashkelon in the south.

• After a series of night raids, the Israeli air force carried out further strikes Monday morning, including destroying the office of Prime Minister of the Government Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, according to witnesses.
  
  During the night, an Israeli aircraft bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, a stronghold of Hamas, and destroyed a mosque in Jabaliya in northern Gaza Strip.
  
  Five girls from the same family aged from one to twelve and living near the mosque were killed in the raid.
  
  According to the latest bilan provided by the head of emergency services in the Gaza Strip Mouawiya Hassanein, the Israeli air strikes since Saturday a total 312 killed and 1420 injured. Most of the dead belonged to Hamas.
  
  Christopher Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, the UN agency to assist Palestinian refugees, citing figures obtained from hospital sources, reported 51 civilians dead including women and children among victims.
  
  "We have nothing against the people of Gaza but we are engaged in a war against Hamas and its allies," said to Parliament the Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak.
  
  "We regret that there are civilian casualties, even if they are not numerous. We do not want to affect women, children, men, and we are not preventing a humanitarian aid," he said.
  
  The so-called "hard lead operation" of unprecedent violence since the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel in 1967, is designed according to the Hebrew state to stop firing rockets into the south from the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, which has dislodged in June 2007, forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
  
  Leaving the specter of a ground offensive, Israel gave Sunday its green light to the mobilization of 6.500 reservists.
  
  Monday, reinforcements of infantry and tanks were deployed at the border of the Gaza Strip, according to the AFP photographer.
  
  In a step that could indicate an imminent ground attack, the Israeli army declared the area border Monday along the Gaza Strip "closed military zone", according to a military spokesman.
  
  The spokesman said that the roads in this area were closed to civilian traffic unless authorized by the army, and only residents of Israeli towns could access them.
  
  In Ashkelon, some 13 km from the Gaza Strip, an Israeli Arab worker was killed and eight other civilians wounded by a Palestinian rocket.
  
  In a statement in Gaza, the armed wing of Hamas said it fired four Grad-type rockets on Ashkelon. A total of twenty rockets fired from Gaza on Monday in southern Israel.
  
  This is the second civilian killed by Palestinian rockets into Israel since the start of the air raids.
  
  Furthermore, a Palestinian wounded four Israelis in an attack with the blade in a West Bank settlement before being critically wounded himself by a bullet, according to sources in the security services.
  
  Sunday afternoon, Israeli warplanes carried out raids against smuggling tunnels in the Rafah area on the border with Egypt. These underground allow Hamas to introduce weapons into the Gaza Strip, under Israeli blockade.
  
  On the other side of the border, Egyptian police fired shots into the air to prevent dozens of Palestinians to enter Egypt to the north of the Rafah terminal. Cairo has deployed new reinforcements in the sector.
  
  Sunday evening, an Egyptian policeman was shot dead and another wounded in Rafah by gunfire from the Gaza Strip.
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• Ennahar/ M. O./ AFP