Israel rejected mounting international pressure to suspend its devastating air offensive against Palestinian militants whose rocket barrages are striking ominously close to the Israeli heartland, sending warplanes on Wednesday to demolish smuggling tunnels that are the lifeline of Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers.
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The diplomatic action has been set in motion by the scale of destruction in Gaza since Israel unleashed its campaign on Saturday, and a casualty toll that Gaza officials now put at 390 dead and some 1,600 wounded. Hamas says some 200 uniformed members of Hamas security forces have been killed, and the UN says at least 60 Palestinian civilians have died. Four Israelis have been killed by militant rocket fire, including three civilians.
The chief of Israel's internal security services, Yuval Diskin, told Cabinet ministers on Wednesday that Hamas' ability to rule had been "badly impaired." Weapons development facilities have been "completely wiped out," and the network of smuggling tunnels has been badly damaged, a participant in the meeting quoted Diskin as saying.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed to the media.
Overnight, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert discussed a 48-hour truce proposal floated by France with his foreign and defense ministers. The meeting ended with a decision to pursue the punishing aerial campaign.
"Giving Hamas a respite just to regroup, rearm is a mistake," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said. "The pressure on the Hamas military machine must continue."
Calls for an immediate cease-fire have also come from the US, the European Union, the UN and Russia. President George W Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally called leaders in the Middle East on Tuesday to press for a durable solution. Underlying the Israeli decision to keep fighting are the mightier weapons that Hamas has smuggled into Gaza through underground tunnels along the border with Egypt. If previously militants had relied on crude homemade rockets that could fly just 12 miles (18 kilometers) to terrorize Israeli border communities, they are now firing industrial-grade weapons that have dramatically expanded their range and put more than one-tenth of Israel's population in their sights.
More than two dozens rockets and mortar shells were fired by mid-day on Wednesday, including five that hit in and around the major southern Israeli city of Beersheba, 22 miles (35 kilometers) from Gaza. One hit an empty school.
Another landed in a small farming community about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of Tel Aviv No serious casualties were reported.
School was canceled in large swaths of Israel's south because of the rocket threat. The 18,000 students at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, southern Israel's only university, were also told to stay home.
Early on Wednesday, Israeli aircraft pounded smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border in another attempt to sever the lifeline that keeps Hamas in power by supplying weapons, food and fuel. Israel and Egypt blockaded Gaza after Hamas violently seized control of the territory in June 2007, and have cracked open their borders only to let in limited amounts of humanitarian aid.
A huge explosion rocked a tunnel that housed a fuel pipeline, and aircraft also smashed the house of a smuggling kingpin. In all, two tunnels were destroyed in the raid, Egyptian security officials in Rafah said.