Israel continues Gaza offensive

Israel sent aircraft to hit targets in the Gaza Strip early today, pressing ahead with its offensive aimed at freeing a captured soldier and halting Palestinian rocket fire, despite international criticism.

Before daybreak today, Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a group of militants near Gaza City, killing one and seriously wounding another, Palestinian hospital officials said. The military said aircraft fired a missile at militants on their way to launch a rocket.

Earlier, Israeli aircraft blasted a building in Gaza City used as a weapons factory by Islamic Jihad, both sides said, setting it on fire. Also, Israeli artillery pounded open areas in southern Gaza, the military said.

Since the offensive began June 28, 52 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials, leading to international complaints that Israel was using excessive force.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday that Israel would push forward with the offensive, by far the biggest in Gaza since Israel pulled out of the crowded seaside territory last month. He told his cabinet that the campaign to free the soldier and stop the rocket fire would take a ”long time”.

Israeli troops, tanks, aircraft and artillery have left destruction in their wake during the invasion, launched three days after Palestinian militants tunnelled under the border and attacked an Israeli army post on June 25, killing two soldiers and capturing Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19.

An Israeli airstrike targeted a car last night carrying Hamas militants near Gaza City, wounding five people, including an eight-year-old girl, Palestinian health officials said. The vehicle was filled with explosives, which led to a series of large secondary explosions, the army said.

Despite the offensive, militants launched three rockets into Israel yesterday, wounding one person in the Israeli town of Sderot and damaging a house. And militants linked to the Palestinians’ ruling Hamas party maintained their refusal to free the soldier or even reveal his condition.

Speaking to the Israeli Cabinet yesterday, Olmert counselled patience.

“We’re talking about a war that will continue for a long time and it is complicated,” Olmert said, according to a participant in the meeting. “This is a war for which we cannot set down a timetable and we can’t say how long it will continue.”

The Israeli Cabinet expressed unanimous support for the military action in Gaza and Olmert’s refusal to negotiate with the Hamas-linked militants, who demanded the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for information about Shalit.

The United Nations blamed Israel for widespread human rights violations and hardship to civilians in Gaza and the European Union expressed concern, but Olmert and other Cabinet ministers said they were not overly concerned about the international reaction.

“Anybody who calls this operation disproportionate has no clue about the facts on the ground. We have been attacked and bombarded for months and weeks,” Cabinet minister Isaac Herzog said.

“With all due respect to all those who criticise us, if anything of this nature would have happened in their homeland, they would have acted much worse.”

Olmert told the cabinet that before Shalit was captured, he had been planning a prisoner release as a goodwill gesture to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but now, a release appears out of the question.

“It’s not a secret before the kidnapping that we would free prisoners. But we intended to release them to moderate elements and not to terrorist elements,” Olmert said. ”The release of prisoners means destroying the moderates in the Palestinian Authority, and would signal to the world that Israel can only talk to extremists.”

Palestinians were widely supportive of the militants’ actions. A poll released Sunday showed that 77% of those questioned backed Shalit’s kidnapping and 67% said they supported further abductions. Sixty-nine percent said the soldier should only be released in exchange for prisoners.

The survey of 1,197 Palestinians by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre had a margin of error of three percentage points.