Israel starts attacks on ground in Gaza

January 4, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

Nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed in the weeklong offensive.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Thousands of Israeli troops backed by columns of tanks and helicopter gunships launched a ground offensive in Gaza on Saturday night with officials saying they expected a lengthy fight in the densely populated territory after eight days of punishing airstrikes failed to halt militant rocket attacks on Israel.

The incursion set off fierce clashes with Palestinian militants, and Gaza’s Hamas rulers vowed the coastal strip would be a “graveyard” for Israelis forces.

“This will not be easy, and it will not be short,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on national television about two hours after ground troops moved in.

The night sky over Gaza was lit by the flash of bullets and balls of fire from tank shells. Sounds of explosions were heard across Gaza City, the territory’s biggest city, and high-rise buildings shook from the bigger booms.

Troops with camouflage face paint marched single file. As the ground troops moved in, Israel kept pounding Gaza with airstrikes. F-16 warplanes hit three targets within a few minutes, including a main Hamas security compound.

Witnesses in Gaza said that in the first phase, Israeli ground forces had moved several hundred yards inside Gaza. Israeli security officials said initial clashes with militants took place in open fields and soldiers did not immediately move into Gaza’s crowded cities, where warfare would likely get much deadlier.

“We have many, many targets,” Israeli army spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich told CNN. “To my estimation, it will be a lengthy operation.”

Israeli leaders said the operation, meant to quell militant rocket and mortar fire on southern Israel, would not end quickly, but that the objective was not to reoccupy Gaza or topple Hamas. The depth and intensity will depend in part on parallel diplomatic efforts that so far haven’t yielded a truce proposal acceptable to Israel, the officials said.

In the airborne phase of Israel’s onslaught, militants were not deterred from bombarding southern Israel with more than 400 rockets — including dozens that extended deeper into Israel than ever before. They fired six rockets into Israel in the first few hours after the ground push began, the military said.

One rocket scored a direct hit on a house in the southern city of Ashkelon on Saturday and another struck a bomb shelter there, leaving its above-ground entrance scarred by shrapnel and blasting a parked bus.

“I don’t want to disillusion anybody, and residents of the south will go through difficult days,” Barak said. “We do not seek war but we will not abandon our citizens to the ongoing Hamas attacks.”

Israel called up tens of thousands of reservists in the event Palestinian militants in the West Bank or Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon decide to exploit the broad offensive in Gaza to launch attacks against Israel on other fronts.

The military said the country’s north was on high alert in case Hezbollah guerrillas decided to use its vast stockpiles of missiles against Israel. Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day war in the summer of 2006.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said U.S. officials have been in regular contact with the Israelis as well as officials from countries in the region and Europe.

“We continue to make clear to them our concerns for civilians, as well as the humanitarian situation,” Johndroe said.

Israel’s bruising air campaign against Gaza over the past eight days began days after a six-month truce expired. Gaza health officials say the air war has killed more than 480 Palestinians in an attempt to halt Hamas rocket attacks that were reaching farther into Israel than ever before. Four Israelis have been killed by rockets.

Israel is taking a risk by wading into intense urban warfare in densely populated Gaza that could exact a much higher toll on both sides and among civilians.