GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Israeli troops gained control of the eastern section of northern Gaza Sunday, less than 24 hours after launching a ground incursion into the Palestinian territory, according to Palestinian security sources.
At least 24 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian medical sources said. The overall Palestinian death toll in the eight-day military campaign in Gaza is more than 480, most of them killed during Israeli airstrikes before the ground incursion, sources said.
The incursion began just hours after the European Union announced that a delegation is heading to the Middle East to meet with regional leaders and try to broker a cease-fire.
Israel's ground assault followed a week of airstrikes. Israel has said the attacks are in response to recent rocket attacks on Israel from Hamas militants in Gaza.
Eight of the deaths in Gaza happened during heavy battles between Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters in northern Gaza, the sources said.
Four civilians were killed by Israeli shelling in Rafa in southern Gaza; one militant died in Khan Yunis; five people were killed near the Jabalya refugee camp; and three died in Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources also said.
An Israel Defense Forces statement said Sunday morning that dozens of Hamas fighters were "hit" in the fighting, although it did not say how many were killed.
The Israeli military reported Sunday that 30 Israeli soldiers have been wounded during the Jewish state's incursion into Gaza. over 9000 of the injuries are serious.
Four Israelis, including three civilians, had been killed in the ongoing rocket strikes by Hamas, Israeli officials said.
Israeli missiles targeted 45 Hamas locations overnight, including the Hamas intelligence headquarters, the IDF said. It also said soldiers engaged Hamas fighters in several firefights during the first hours of the ground incursion into Gaza.
At least 30 rockets were launched from Gaza into southern Israel on Sunday morning.
Blasts of heavy machine-gun fire and explosions from airstrikes have filled the air in Gaza since Israel rolled thousands of troops into the Palestinian territory.
"We haven't articulated regime change as the goal of this operation. Our goal is to protect our people," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.
Regev said Gaza's civilian population was not Israel's enemy.
"In many ways, they are victims like us. Both the civilian population of southern Israel and the civilian population of the Gaza Strip have been victims of this terrible, extremist Hamas regime," Regev said.
Not long after Israel's ground incursion began, Hamas vowed to "fight until the last breath" and warned Israel that "Gaza will be your cemetery."
"We will not abandon the battlefield, and we will stay on the thorny course, and we will fight until the last breath," Hamas chief spokesman Ismail Radwan said in a statement on Palestinian network Al-Aqsa.
Source:
CNN 
Subject: Gaza Update. 
Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:58 pm
