Israel hammered the headquarters of the Hamas-run government in Gaza and massed its troops and tanks near the border of the besieged Palestinian territory Saturday, raising the specter of an imminent ground invasion.
The mobilization follows news Friday that the Israeli government authorized the call up of 75,000 reservists, the latest move in Israel's days-old military campaign to stop daily rocket attacks from Gaza. The conflict took a grim turn on Friday when rockets fell on Jerusalem, Israel's seat of power.
"We are in the process of expanding the campaign," Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, told Israel's Channel 2.
Convoys carrying tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers rolled toward the Gaza border Saturday, part of what the IDF described as 30,000 troops that were being mobilized along the Israeli-Gaza border.
Israeli warplanes Saturday leveled the Palestinian Cabinet headquarters where a day earlier Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil met with Hamas officials, according to Hamas TV.
The strikes targeted the office of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Ministry of the Interior, a police compound and a Hamas training facility, according to a statement released by the IDF.
Q&A: Gaza strikes could be beginning of ground attack
World leaders and the United Nations have called on Israeli and Palestinian governing bodies to show restraint, fearing at the very least a possible repeat of Israel's 2008 invasion that left at least 1,400 people dead.
Eight people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Saturday, raising to 39 the number killed since Israel's military operation, dubbed Pillar of Defense, began Wednesday, according to Palestinian government and health officials. Israel is reporting three deaths from a Hamas rocket attack in the southern community of Kiryat Malachi and at least nine injuries, including three soldiers wounded in a rocket attack.
More than 330 in Gaza have been wounded since Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials.
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