Gaza Death Toll Tops 300 As Israel Vows to Fight to Bitter End

Israel stepped up its bombing campaign in Gaza today, hitting an interior ministry building, a major university and a house next to the home of the former Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh.

Witnesses in Gaza City reported six separate air strikes overnight at the Islamic University, the leading university in the Gaza Strip which has links to the Islamist movement Hamas. Israeli jets hit a guest house used by the Hamas government. All Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, have left their homes and gone into hiding.

The Israeli military said it struck dozens more targets including buildings used for storing and manufacturing weapons, and that naval vessels had also bombarded targets from the sea.

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said the military was fighting a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas.

Earlier today the Israeli army declared areas around Gaza a "closed military zone", citing the risk from Palestinian rocket fire, and ordering journalists observing the build-up of armored forces to leave. The move comes after the Israeli military deployed tanks close to the border, and could be another sign that a major ground invasion is being considered.

Palestinian officials said the death toll since the Israeli bombing began on Saturday had risen to at least 314, with as many as 1,400 others injured. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said at least 57 of the dead were civilians. It based the figure, which an UNRWA spokesman called "conservative", on visits by agency officials to hospitals and medical centers.

With hospitals in Gaza stretched to breaking point, Egypt began to take in wounded from Gaza for the first time today, with reports of more than a dozen Egyptian ambulances waiting to ferry the injured at the border crossing at Rafah. According to reports trucks carrying aid and medical supplies were also allowed into Gaza from Egypt.

Militants in Gaza fired rockets into southern Israel today, killing one Israeli and injuring several others in a mid-morning strike on Ashkelon, a city just north of Gaza. Two Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets since Saturday.

In total, Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza have killed around 18 people in southern Israel in the past eight years.

Israeli analysts and commentators said the military's immediate goal was to force Hamas and other militant groups to stop firing rockets and submit to a new ceasefire on better terms with Israel.

Israel's cabinet yesterday approved the call-up of thousands of reservists while pressing on with air strikes, following the biggest single day of conflict in Gaza since the 1967 war. Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, reportedly told a cabinet meeting the fighting in Gaza would be "long, painful and difficult".

In an attempt to escape the mayhem yesterday, hundreds of Gazans broke through the border fence with Egypt at Rafah, where Palestinian gunmen and Egyptian border guards traded gunfire, killing an Egyptian and a Palestinian.

Gaza's hospitals were running short of supplies and had corpses lying on their floors as the morgues filled up.

Israeli air strikes hit 40 smuggling tunnels that had been dug under the border fence to evade Israel's blockade of the overcrowded strip.

The UN security council yesterday called for a halt to the violence in Gaza and the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said Israel's use of force was "disproportionate". The US blamed Hamas, the Islamist movement which won Palestinian elections three years ago and then seized full control of Gaza last year. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said today that "in order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable ceasefire".

The Israeli government and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza observed a ceasefire for six months, but it began to break down in November.

Israeli officials, including the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, have spoken openly of their wish to topple Hamas in Gaza. But most Israeli military analysts said they did not expect the armed forces to seize full control again for fear it would cost the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers.

Israel's actions come ahead of a general election due on 10 February. Livni, who is running second in the polls to be prime minister, appeared to rule out a major ground invasion. "Our goal is not to reoccupy Gaza Strip," she said on NBC's Meet the Press program.

Hamas has sounded defiant in the face of the attacks, with Khaled Meshaal, the group's political leader in exile, calling for a "third uprising" among Palestinians.

But the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has accused Hamas of provoking the Israeli raids by not extending the ceasefire.