MASSACRE IN GAZA

GAZA: Israeli warplanes pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip yesterday, killing at least 225 people in one of the bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.
Prospects for progress in peace talks seemed as good as dead.
Israel said the strikes were in response to rocket fire by Gaza militants, which intensified after Hamas ended a six-month-old ceasefire a week ago.
The rockets caused few injuries, but goaded Israelis as they gear up for a February election. Yesterday one man was killed by a rocket fired after the Israeli strikes began.
“There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and now the time has come to fight,” Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said. Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that “it may take time, and each and every one of us must be patient so we can complete the mission”.
The head the Hamas government in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh said: “Palestine has never seen an uglier massacre” and in Damascus, Hamas leader Khalid Mishal called for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel. “We will not leave our land, we will not raise white flags and we will not kneel except before God,” Haniyeh said.
Black smoke billowed over Gaza City, where the dead and wounded lay scattered on the ground after Israel bombed more than 40 security compounds, including two where Hamas was hosting graduation ceremonies for new recruits.
At the main Gaza City graduation ceremony, uniformed bodies lay in a pile and the wounded writhed in pain. Some rescue workers beat their heads and shouted “God is Greatest”. One badly wounded man quietly recited verses from the Qur’an.
More than 700 Palestinians were wounded in all, medics said.
Israel instructed hundreds of thousands of Israelis living up to 30km from the Gaza border to remain in “safe areas” indoors in case of retaliatory rocket fire.
Backing Israel, the administration of US President George W Bush, in its final weeks in office, put the onus on Hamas to prevent a further escalation.
“The US ... holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement. “The ceasefire should be restored immediately.”
The UN and the European Union, in contrast, simply called for an immediate halt to all violence.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Israeli air campaign was “criminal” and urged world powers to intervene.
Egypt said it would keep trying to restore the truce.
A five-day Israeli offensive in March killed more than 120 people, but yesterday’s death toll was the highest for a single day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948, when the Jewish state was established.
“I call upon you to carry out a third intifada (uprising),” Hamas leader Mishal said on Al Jazeera television. The first Palestinian intifada began in 1987 and the second in 2000 after peace talks failed.
Hamas estimated that at least 100 members of its security forces had been killed, including police chief Tawfiq Jabber and the head of Hamas’s security and protection unit, along with at least 15 women and some children.
Morgues across the Gaza Strip ran out of space for bodies.
Hamas, which won a 2006 parliamentary election but was shunned by Western powers over its refusal to renounce violence and recognise Israel, said all of its security compounds in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or seriously damaged. - Reutersamas-ruled Gaza Strip yesterday, killing at least 225 people in one of the bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.