WORLD> Middle East
Israel sends more troops to Gaza border
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-01 09:20

In the Negev desert city of Beersheba, people visited a school where a rocket made a direct hit Tuesday evening, slamming through the ceiling and showering debris on students' desks. A visitor illuminated by a shaft of light through the hole in the roof said with some astonishment, "This is my daughter's seat."

In Gaza, the sites of airstrikes have also attracted the curious and the defiant, including a Palestinian man who planted a green Hamas flag atop a mound of debris at a flattened mosque, its minaret still thrusting toward a stormy sky.

The Israeli military, which leveled the mosque Wednesday, said that it was being used as a missile storage site and that the bombs dropped on it set off secondary explosions. It was the fifth mosque hit in the campaign.

The chief of Israel's internal security services, Yuval Diskin, told a government meeting that Hamas members had hidden inside mosques, believing they would be safe from airstrikes and using them as command centers, according to an Israeli security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to share the information.

Other militants were hiding in hospitals, some disguised as doctors and nurses, Diskin said, according to the official.

Echoing Israel's cool response to truce proposals, a senior Hamas leader with ties to its military wing said that now was not the right time to call off the fight. Hamas was unhappy with the six-month truce that ended just before the fighting began because it didn't result in an easing of Israel's crippling economic blockade of Gaza.

Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu said that although Hamas leaders had been driven underground, the Gaza government was functioning and had met in the past few days.

"What our people want is clear: an immediate stop to all kinds of aggression, the end of the siege by all means, the opening of all border crossings, and international guarantees that the occupation will not renew this terrorist war again," Nunu said.

Israel's latest airstrikes concentrated on crushing the many smuggling tunnels under Gaza's southern border with Egypt. They provide a crucial lifeline, not just for Hamas rulers, but also for bringing in food and fuel for Gaza's people.

Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, expressed concern about the fighting's impact on civilians. He said hospitals were struggling to cope with casualties and the lack of fuel deliveries had forced Gaza's power plant to shut down Tuesday.

But UN officials said the major need was grain and other food. Holmes said the Kerem Shalom crossing remained open and 55 trucks got through Tuesday and about 60 on Wednesday, mainly carrying food. He said Israel had been "cooperative in principle about these supplies, but we need to see more results."

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said US officials were seeing "a good flow" of medical and food supplies into Gaza.

Israel and Egypt blockaded Gaza after Hamas fighters violently seized control of the territory in 2007 and the two nations have opened their borders only to let in limited humanitarian aid.

On Wednesday, several wounded Palestinians were taken across the Israeli and Egyptian borders for treatment, including a child bundled in blankets.

Gaza's southern smuggling zone was hit again Wednesday morning and evening in airstrikes that left vast craters over the collapsed underground passages. Hospital officials said two people were killed and 42 wounded in the bombing.

Diskin, the Israeli security chief, told a Cabinet meeting that the tunnel network had been badly damaged. Israel said more than 80 tunnels were destroyed. Several hundred tunnels ran under the border before Israeli warplanes began striking.

Hamas was trying to smuggle some of its activists to Egypt through still-passable tunnels, Diskin said.

Israel fears that opening border crossings would allow Hamas -- which remains officially committed to Israel's destruction -- to further strengthen its hold on the territory.

Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival who controls only the West Bank, suggested he would not continue peace talks with Israel at any price. He said on Palestinian TV that the stalled talks had become useless and were not reaching any of the goals -- namely the creation of a Palestinian state.