According to The Jerusalem Post, more than a thousand Askqelon people gathered on January 3 in Rabin Square (Hebrew: Kikar Rabin””,”” ‘) from Tel Aviv to protest against the operation in the Gaza Strip .
The Israeli air force attacked targets over forty at night. In one of the attacks killed a commander of the Brigades of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Zakaria al-Jamal. In another attack killed the battalion commander of Gaza City, Mamduch Jamal. Israel also bombed a school, according to the Army used as a meeting and launch of several missiles, as well as the airport control tower Yasir Arafat. also were bombed weapons caches, training centers and homes of leaders Hamas, the majority of the goals were abandoned. The attack on the mosque in Beit Lahiya left between thirteen and fifteen people killed, and nearly injured to varying degrees. One person died in an orphanage in the neighborhood Ar Rimal in Gaza City due to a bombing that claimed, allegedly attacking a group of Palestinian militants posted next to a mosque nearby.
The Israeli army ground units deployed around the border started to launch artillery fire on the Gaza Strip, a prelude to the final ground operation, announced for several days. According to Palestinian witnesses, the artillery provoked a large explosion in Gaza City and a series of deflagraciones in areas near the border with Israel. The first ground offensive by the deceased was a child of the al-Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City, which was hit of a shell fired from an Israeli armored car. Eleven other people were injured.
Hours earlier, the Hamas leader in exile Khaled Meshaal said on the possible ground offensive: “We are ready for the challenge, this battle has been imposed but we are sure that we get the victory because we have prepared for it.” And the Israeli soldiers threatened that “if you commit the act stupid to enter Gaza, who knows, we may have a second or third ” Shalit “.”
After the start of the ground offensive, several tanks, along with other military vehicles and infantry units, escorted by Apache helicopters entered the northeastern Gaza Strip, after which there was a sharp exchange of fire with militants Brigades Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and other armed Palestinian groups. The general Avital Leibovitch repeated that “the objective is to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas in the area of operations.” Ha’aretz said that he had at least 10,000 soldiers along the border and prepared to join the offensive. Prior to the start of the offensive, the Israeli Government had approved the mobilization of tens of thousands of reservists . According to Israeli television Channel Two, dozens of Hamas members were killed after the start of the ground offensive by the Israeli army. A Hamas spokesman said in statements to Al Arabiya television that “some” would have fallen Israeli soldiers in the fighting with members of Ashdod the Islamist organization.
The Israeli foreign minister, Ehud Barak, announced in a press conference after launching the invasion that the ground campaign “will be neither quick nor easy.” Barak said: “I know well the dangers of a ground offensive, and the high price they have to pay, but we can not abandon our fellow citizens, residents of the south, who have been victims of Hamas rockets.” Before the start of the ground invasion, a number of rockets fell on Israeli cities. One impact an apartment building in Ashdod, causing two minor injuries. Another woman was wounded in the afternoon, after the impact of another rocket in Netivot, which later caused the collapse of the building. At least nine rockets fell on the western Negev, one of which impact directly on a house in Ascalon. Following the start of the offensive, four other rockets landed in the unpopulated area of Shaar Hanegev, without causing victims. With them, the number of rockets hit Israel on the eighth day of the offensive is thirty-nine.
The daily Yedioth Aharonoth reported that Israeli tanks and infantry moved into northern Israeli in the Gaza Strip in accordance Israel Air Force with the plan without widespread resistance to the incursion. “Since we went there, there have been no incidents and extra troops operate along the lines prescribed,” said an anonymous spokesman for the Israeli army.
According to the official Palestinian agency Wafa, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, like other leaders of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine condemned strongly the “Expansion of the professional aggression” by Israel on Gaza, the Israeli government responsible for the “dangerous consequences” that aggression persists.
- CNN
U.S. President Bush laid the blame for the recent fighting in the Gaza Strip are at the foot of Hamas, accusing militants carrying out a campaign of violence against Israel, with little attention for her people. - CNN
U.S. President Bush laid the blame for the recent fighting in the Gaza Strip are at the foot of Hamas, accusing militants carrying out a campaign of violence against Israel, with little attention for her people. - New York Daily News
The last of the Americans still in the Gaza Strip were evacuated Friday as Israeli tanks mass on the border and a top Hamas leader warned against a “black fate” if they invade. - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Economic suicide attacks. What can you call the launch of a completely counter-productive war against Israel by Hamas terrorists in Gaza ‘
Get more:
- The Hunt For The Engineer: The Inside Story of How Isral’s Counterterrorist Forces Tracked and Killed the Hamas Master Bomber by Samuel M Katz (Paperback – Aug 1, 2002)
- Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement by Zaki Chehab (Hardcover – April 26, 2007)
- Dunces of Doomsday: 10 Blunders That Gave Rise to Radical Islam, Terrorist Regimes, And the Threat of an American Hiroshima by Paul L. Williams (Hardcover – April 6, 2006)