Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, dividing the coastal territory into three parts and surrounding its biggest city in an effort to prevent Hamas militants from accessing weapons.
At least 40 civilians, including three medics, have reportedly been killed since Israel launched a ground invasion late Saturday, Gaza health officials told the HNN.
Since the Israeli offensive began on Dec. 27, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 100 civilians, Palestinian and U.N. officials told the AP. At least three Israeli civilians and two soldiers have been killed in the same period.
Palestinian medics told HNN that 10 Hamas militants and 30 civilians — including a mother and her four children — have been killed in the ground offensive. Israeli defense officials, however, said that an estimated 30 Hamas militants had been killed in the incursion so far.
A barrage of at least 45 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel on Sunday alone, HNN has learned.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Israel's ground offensive as "brutal aggression," his harshest words yet in describing the assault on his Hamas rivals. Abbas said Sunday that the situation has become unbearable and that "national unity is the most important thing to us."
His offer to start talks on sharing power still stands, Abbas said, though Hamas last week ignored the invitation.
Hamas said it had captured two Israeli soldiers Sunday, Reuters reported. The Israeli army, however, could not confirm the report.
Israeli leaders said the ground operation, known as Cast Lead, was meant to quell militant rocket and mortar fire on southern Israel.
Thousands of soldiers in three brigade-size formations pushed into Gaza after nightfall Saturday, beginning a long-awaited ground offensive after a week of intense aerial bombardment. Black smoke billowed over Gaza City in the early morning hours as bursts of machine gun fire rang out.
TV footage showed Israeli troops with night-vision goggles and camouflage face paint marching in single file. Artillery barrages preceded their advance, and they moved through fields and orchards following bomb-sniffing dogs ensuring their routes had not been booby-trapped.
The military said troops killed or wounded dozens of militant fighters. Palestinian medics and doctors said 23 Palestinians have been killed — three Hamas fighters and the rest civilians. Many of the casualties were in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, the said.
Palestinian officials say nearly 480 people, including dozens of civilians, were killed in the weeklong air offensive.
Army ambulances were seen bringing Israeli wounded to a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. The military reported 30 Israeli troops were wounded, two seriously, in the opening hours of the offensive.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak predicted a long and difficult campaign in Gaza, a densely populated territory of 1.4 million where militants operate and easily hide among the crowded urban landscape.
The war will "not be short and it will not be easy," Barak said in a nationally televised address late Saturday. "We do not seek war but we will not abandon our citizens to the ongoing Hamas attacks."
Hamas threatened to turn Gaza into a "graveyard" for Israeli forces.
"You entered like rats," Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan told Israeli soldiers in a statement on Hamas' Al Aqsa TV. "Gaza will be a graveyard for you, God willing," he said.
The ground operation is the second phase in an offensive that began as a weeklong aerial onslaught aimed at halting Hamas rocket fire that has reached deeper and deeper into Israel, threatening major cities and one-eighth of Israel's population.
Rocket fire has persisted, however, and several rockets fell in Israel on Sunday morning, causing no casualties. In much of southern Israel school has been canceled and life has been largely paralyzed.
While the air offensive presented little risk for Israel's army, sending in ground troops is a much more dangerous proposition. Hamas is believed to have some 20,000 gunman who know the dense urban landscape intimately. For months, Israeli leaders had resisted a ground invasion, fearing heavy casualties.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was aware of such risks, but decided that the government had no more choice.
"I want to be able to go to the Israeli public and all the mothers and say, 'We did everything in a responsible manner,"' Olmert said in a statement released by his office. "In the end, we reached the moment where I had to decide to send out soldiers."
He stressed the campaign's objective is to restore quiet to Israel's south, not to topple Hamas or reoccupy Gaza. Israel considers Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since June 2007 and is sworn to Israel's destruction, a terrorist group.
In his first public comments since the ground operation was launched, Olmert said Sunday that the invasion was unavoidable and that his government exhausted all other options before approving the operation.
Israeli Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog, in an interview with HNN, said the aim of the ground offensive "is to make a dramatic change in the circumstances on the ground, whereby Israeli citizens on our side of the border will be able to resume living normally."
"Right now we've started a ground operation, which is aimed at preventing missile launchings against Israel from various sites in Gaza Strip," Herzog said. "It may take time Hamas will try to show in their arrogant way that they are still around, and our aim is to protect our citizens like any normal society would do."
Israel has launched at least two other large ground offensives in Gaza since withdrawing its troops from the area in 2005. But the size of this latest operation dwarfs those previous attempts, with at least three times the firepower.
Israel also has called up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers, which defense officials said could enable a far broader ground offensive as the operation's third phase. The troops could also be used in the event Palestinian militants in the West Bank or Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon decide to launch attacks. Hezbollah opened a war against Israel in 2006 when it was in the midst of a large operation in Gaza.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the military's preparations are classified.
An armored force south of Gaza City penetrated as deep as the abandoned settlement of Netzarim, which Israel left along with other Israeli communities when it pulled out of Gaza in 2005, both military officials and Palestinian witnesses said.
That move effectively cut off Gaza City, the territory's largest population center, from the rest of Gaza to the south.
The offensive focused on northern Gaza, where most of the rockets are fired into Israel, but at least one incursion was reported in the southern part of the strip. Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, uses smuggling tunnels along the southern border with Egypt to bring in weapons.
Warplanes struck about four dozen targets overnight, including tunnels, weapons storage facilities, areas used to launch mortars and squads of Hamas fighters, the military said.
Gunboats backed up the ground forces, attacking Hamas intelligence headquarters in Gaza City, rocket-launching areas and positions of Hamas marine forces.
Hamas was responding with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades. Field commanders communicated over walkie talkie, updating gunmen on the location of Israeli forces. Commanders told gunmen in the streets not to gather in big groups and not to use cell phones. Hamas' TV and radio stations, broadcasting from secret locations after their offices were destroyed, remained on the air, broadcasting live coverage.
Ground forces had not entered major Gaza towns and cities by early Sunday morning, instead fighting in rural communities and open areas militants often use to launch rockets and mortar rounds. Militants also fire from heavily populated neighborhoods.
Residents of the small northern Gaza community of al-Attatra said soldiers moved from house to house by blowing holes through walls. Most of the houses were unoccupied, their residents already having fled.
The fighting in Gaza has created "increased chatter" on radical Web sites and in the intelligence community during the past 48 to 72 hours, sources tell HNN.
Although they were quick to say there have been no specific or credible threats, the escalation in the Middle East, "can be seen by our enemies as an opportunity" to attack U.S. and Israeli interests outside of the region, sources told HNN.
Historically, Hamas and Al Qaeda do not have an operational relationship, but their call to hit Israeli targets outside the region could inspire a "lone wolf" attack, sources said.
Israel launched the air campaign against Gaza on Dec. 27. Gaza health officials say more than 480 Palestinians were killed in the first eight days of the operation. The breakdown of combatants and civilians remains unclear, but the U.N. says at least 100 civilians were killed in the initial, aerial phase of the war.
Hundreds of rockets have hit Israel so far, and four Israelis have been killed.
The decision to send ground troops into Gaza was taken after Hamas kept up its rocket fire despite the aerial assault, government officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because discussions leading up to wartime decisions are confidential.
The ballooning death toll in Gaza — along with concerns of a looming humanitarian crisis — has aroused mounting world outrage, as evidenced by protests that drew tens of thousands of demonstrators in European capitals on Saturday.
"There is a humanitarian crisis. It's impossible to say how many innocent women, innocent children and innocent babies are being caught up in this conflict, who are being maimed and killed," said Chris Gunness, a United Nations spokesman. "This offensive must stop."
Denunciations also came from the French government, which unsuccessfully proposed a two-day truce earlier this week, and from Egypt, which brokered the six-month truce whose breakdown preceded the Israeli offensive.
But the U.S. put the blame squarely on Hamas. 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," he said.
At an emergency consultation of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday night, the U.S. blocked approval of a statement demanded by Arab countries calling for an immediate cease-fire and expressing serious concern at the escalation of violence.
Hamas began to emerge as Gaza's main power broker when it won Palestinian parliamentary elections three years ago. It has ruled the impoverished territory since seizing control from forces loyal to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.
Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and many other Western nations. From 2000 to 2004, Hamas was responsible for killing nearly 400 Israelis and wounding more than 2,000 in 425 attacks, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
From 2001 through May 2008, Hamas launched more than 3,000 Qassam rockets and 2,500 mortar attacks against Israeli targets.
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