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TEL AVIV. – Israeli air raids have killed at least 41 people in the Gaza Strip as its operations inside the Palestinian enclave entered its third day.
Palestinian officials yesterday said the Israeli attacks, which number in their hundreds, had also wounded more than 300 people. Palestinian fighters have continued to fire mortar bombs and rockets into Israel, with some reaching Tel Aviv.
No casualties have been reported.

Local media in Gaza said one of the Israeli attacks targeted the house of a commander in the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. Casualties figures are unknown. Another blew up the house of Hafez Hamad, a leader of the military wing of Islamic Jihad. He was killed along with at least four women and children, according to neighbours and hospital officials.

An 80-year-old woman was killed in an attack on Al-Mughraqa Village in southern Gaza, according to reports. Khaled Messhall, the political leader of Hamas, yesterday said the “extreme” Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu was to blame for the latest round of violence. He urged Israelis to change their leadership and force their leaders to end their assaults on Gaza. “Netanyahu will take you from disaster to disaster. They will give you nothing but defeat and destruction,” he said.

“You kill our people. The world is aware – the war has been forced upon us. We have not forced this war.”
In response to Meshaal’s speech, Naftali Bennet, Israel’s economy minister and the leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, said: “Meshaal was talking nonsense as usual”.

“We are going to continue the pressure and we are going to expand our operation,” he told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv.
He said Israel would “haunt Hamas terror group until they stop shooting missiles”.

The Israeli cabinet has authorised the mobilisation of 40 000 reservists for an operation targeting Gaza. Only a fraction of them have so far been mobilised, though officials hinted at a lengthy campaign in Gaza.

“We are preparing for a battle against Hamas which will not end within a few days,” defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, said on Tuesday.
Four rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel between midnight and sunrise, the army said, three of them at the southern city of Be’er Sheva.

Five members of Hamas were also killed in a makeshift naval commando attack on a military base in Zikim, near the southern city of Israel.
There were clashes overnight throughout the occupied West Bank between Palestinians and Israeli troops.

At least six people were injured near Ramallah, and protests were also reported in Bethlehem and Hebron. – Al Jazeera.