Quote:Israel Expands Gaza Strike, Kills 5 Palestinians
Fri Oct 1, 9:25 AM ET  Top Stories - Reuters


By Nidal al-Mughrabi


GAZA (Reuters) - The Israeli army killed five Palestinians in missile strikes Friday as it poured reinforcements into northern Gaza, expanding a ground offensive intended to root out militants firing rockets at Israeli towns.


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Palestinian officials said 90 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles pushed into the coastal strip before dawn, hours after 28 Palestinians and three Israelis were killed Thursday, Gaza's bloodiest day in four years of conflict.


Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) approved an intensified campaign to re-occupy Palestinian-run parts of northern Gaza to halt rocket firings that have fueled criticism of his plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the territory by the end of 2005.


Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (news - web sites), Sharon's rival in the rightist Likud party and a critic of uprooting Gaza settlements, suggested the prime minister might have to drop his pullout plan if Palestinian attacks worsened to "catastrophic" levels.


Hamas, an Islamic militant group behind a campaign of suicide bombings and rocket firings, called Israel's incursion into Gaza's largest refugee camp a declaration of "all-out war" and vowed not to submit to military might.


The stepped-up operation in the Jabalya camp followed the killing of two Israeli pre-schoolers in a Hamas rocket strike in the border town of Sderot Wednesday.


Amid wails of grief, several thousand mourners gathered to bury the 2-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy, the children of Ethiopian immigrants.


In Jabalya, gunmen fired volleys in the air as 30,000 Palestinians, many shouting for revenge, marched in funerals of fellow Arabs killed Thursday.


RISK OF GETTING BOGGED DOWN


"There will be non-stop army patrols to draw armed men into the streets and kill them from the air," an Israeli security source said, outlining the army's strategy.


But some Israeli commentators warned against getting bogged down in Gaza, where combat in narrow streets and alleys makes forces more vulnerable and risks drawing international censure.


Even as troops penetrated deep into Jabalya for the first time, gunmen converged on the camp to battle invading forces.


Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie called the offensive "state terror" and urged international intervention.


The army said it had done its utmost to avoid civilian casualties but that militants had endangered non-combatants by hunkering down in densely populated areas.


As gun battles raged in Jabalya, an air strike near a mosque killed two Hamas militants on a motorbike, witnesses said. Israeli military sources said the missile hit a rocket crew.


Hours later, a missile killed three people near a school. Witnesses said they were unarmed and in civilian clothes.


Military sources said the army hit a group laying mines against Israeli forces, which have had to make their way through booby-trapped streets. Bulldozers plowed through houses to clear a path into the teeming camp of 100,000 Thursday.


Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, said it would stop rocket attacks "only if the Zionist enemy stops all sorts of aggression against our people everywhere."


The latest cycle of bloodshed has sent Sharon scrambling to counter right-wing critics who say his plan to withdraw troops and settlers from Gaza next year has emboldened militants trying to give the impression that Israel is being driven out.


Israel's army wants to smash armed groups before leaving. Sharon's inner cabinet approved Thursday an open-ended operation code-named "Days of Reckoning," which entails setting up a buffer zone to keep rocket launchers out of range of Israel and carrying out raids into north Gaza's militant strongholds.