Foreign residents flee Gaza as raids continue

Israel bowed to international pressure today to allow hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports to leave besieged Gaza.

But it kept up attacks for a sixth day, including bombing a mosque it claimed was used to store weapons and destroying the homes of more than a dozen Hamas operatives.

Israel has been building up artillery, armour and infantry on Gaza’s border in an indication the week-old air assault against its Hamas rulers could soon expand with a ground incursion.

International calls for a cease-fire have been growing, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected in the region next week.

There was no slowdown in violence today , with Israel attacking new targets and Palestinians firing at least 30 rockets into southern Israel. But Israel managed to open its border with Gaza to allow nearly 300 Palestinians with foreign passports to flee.

Many of the evacuees were foreign-born women married to Palestinians and their children. Spouses who did not hold foreign citizenship were not allowed out.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said most of the evacuees were Russian or Eastern European.

Israel launched the bombing campaign last Saturday in a bid to halt weeks of intensifying Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. It has dealt a heavy blow to Hamas, but failed to halt the rockets.

New attacks today struck homes in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, wounding four Israelis.

After destroying Hamas’ security compounds, Israel turned its attention to the group’s leadership.

Planes hit around 20 houses believed to belong to Hamas militants and members of other armed groups.

The Israelis either warned nearby residents by phone or fired a warning missile to try to reduce civilian casualties. Israeli planes also dropped leaflets east of Gaza giving a confidential phone number and email address for people to report locations of rocket squads.

It used similar tactics during its 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Most of the targeted homes belonged to activist leaders and appeared to be empty at the time, but one man was killed in a strike in the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Separate airstrikes killed five other Palestinians – including a young teenage boy east of Gaza City and three children – two brothers and their cousin – who were playing in southern Gaza.

More than 400 Gazans have been killed and 1,700 wounded in the Israeli campaign, Gaza health officials said. The number of combatants and civilians killed is unclear, but Hamas has said around half of the dead are members of its security forces and the UN has said more than 60 are civilians, 34 of them children.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in the rocket attacks, which have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing an eighth of Israel’s population of seven million within rocket range.

The mosque destroyed today was known as a Hamas stronghold, and the army said it was used to store weapons. It also was identified with Nizar Rayan, the Hamas militant leader killed yesterday when Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on his home.

Israel’s military said the homes of Hamas leaders are being used to store missiles and other weapons, and the hit on Rayan’s house triggered secondary explosions from the stockpile there.

While keeping up the military pressure, Israel has offered a small opening for the intense diplomatic efforts, saying it would consider a halt to the fighting. But it has attached the strict condition that international monitors enforce the truce. The current fighting follows a six-month truce that was repeatedly violated by Palestinian rocket and mortar fire.

Concerned about protests, Israeli police stepped up security and restricted access to Friday prayers at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, barring all males under 50 from entering.

Prayers in Jerusalem ended without incident, though in a nearby east Jerusalem district youths clashed with anti-riot police on horseback.

Jerusalem’s mufti Mohammed Hussein said a mere 3,000 Palestinians attended prayers because of tough restrictions, which barred all males under the age of 50 from entering.

“We condemn these measures, and we believe they contradict the principle of freedom of worship,” he said.