Gaza / PNN – After announcements that a decision whether to increase the military attack on the Gaza Strip would be made tomorrow, Sunday, Israeli forces instead launched a major operation today.

More than two dozen military aircraft fired missiles into the Gaza Strip, at least 30 hitting the security headquarters of the security services in the heart of Gaza City. Several residential neighborhoods were hit. As of 10:00 pm the death toll is 225 with injuries in the hundreds.

Most of a Gaza City girls' school was taken to Al Shifa Hospital. The Israelis have killed 225 Palestinians with more expected to die. The Israeli government says it is just the beginning. Among the 780 injured are at least 120 critical.

The shelling came on the heels of a number of Israeli threats against the Hamas party, elected to the leadership of the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006.

Israeli forces say they were acting today to stop the armed resistance from launching projectiles. Few injuries or damages are ever reported in Israeli areas from the projectiles launched from the Gaza Strip, which has been under siege for a year and a half.

The armed resistance wing affiliated with the Hamas party, Al Qassam Brigades, issued a call in response to respond to all forms of Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.

President Abbas strongly condemned the brutal aggression on the Gaza Strip and demanded that it be stopped immediately.

Meanwhile, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, presidential spokesman, said that the president is calling on the Israeli government to stop this aggression immediately, “in order to spare our people,” and he “calls upon the international community to intervene to stop this aggression.”

The Council of Ministers asked today that all doctors and nurses on strike in the Gaza Strip return to their work immediately. The Council called on all medical teams working in hospitals “to help save the lives of wounded at the hands of Israeli aggression and provide the necessary treatment for them.”

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, called on the public in all provinces to get out and demonstrate in the streets to protest against the massacres of the sector. In Ramallah’s Manara Circle hundreds of people are gathered flying Palestinian flags. In East Jerusalem the shop fronts are closed and people are milling in the streets.

Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas spokesman, said that what is happening is a “mass execution in cold blood with US financial support and appalling Arab silence.”

Palestinian medical sources said that the Director General of Police Major General Tawfiq Jabr has fallen in the raids, which targeted the headquarters of the security police article in Gaza. The number of martyrs is expected to increase throughout the day.
 
An Israeli army spokesman confirmed that the air attacks on the Gaza Strip “are just beginning.” The Israelis said that the purpose is to end the rule of Hamas, the party who won the 1996 elections. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is among those orchestrating the continuation of attacks.

This was confirmed by a source close to outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who said the military operation will continue until the end of the projectiles, according to him.

The media quoted Egyptian sources as saying that several ambulances were being let out via the Rafah crossing with Egypt in order to transfer the wounded to hospitals there because of the increasing number of martyrs. The successive air raids are bringing more, said the governor of the Sinai. Egypt is keeping the Rafah border crossing open for the transfer of Palestinians injured by the strikes.

Mohammed Dahlan called for the need to promote unity and solidarity of relations between Fateh and Hamas, and to rehabilitate the Palestinian political system.

Official pressure is now on President Abbas to completely sever all ties and contacts with the Israelis. The dead include children, women, men, the elderly and the young.