Israel intensified its land offensive in Gaza with artillery, tanks and gunboats on Friday and warned it could "significantly widen" an operation Palestinian officials said was killing ever greater numbers of civilians. Palestinian health officials said 35 Palestinians, including a baby, four children and a 70-year-old woman, had been killed since Israel sent ground forces on Thursday into the densely-populated enclave of 1.8 million Palestinians. The Israeli military said it killed 17 Palestinian gunmen while another 13 surrendered and were taken for questioning after the infantry and tank assault began in the Islamist Hamas-dominated territory. One Israeli soldier was killed and several others were wounded in the operations, in which some 150 targets, including 21 concealed rocket launchers and four tunnels, have been attacked, according to the military. The land advance followed 10 days of barrages against Gaza from air and sea, hundreds of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel and failed Egyptian attempts to secure a ceasefire. Rocket salvoes, many of them intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile shield system, continued on Friday against southern Israel, police said, causing no casualties. "We chose to start this operation after we exhausted other options and reached the conclusion that without it we could pay a much higher price," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters before a special cabinet session at Tel Aviv military headquarters. "The main goal is to restore quiet. "My instructions...to the Israeli army, with the approval of the security cabinet, is to prepare for the possibility of a widening, a significant widening of the ground operation." He did not say what form a broadened offensive might take. Israel says its forces have focused so far on seeking out tunnels Palestinian militants might use for cross-border raids. One such infiltration was narrowly thwarted on Thursday, with the army saying it had repelled 13 Hamas gunmen after they emerged from a tunnel close to an Israeli farming community. To back up regular forces, Israel said it was calling up 18,000 military reservists, adding to 30,000 already mobilised. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri responded with defiance to the Israeli escalation: "Netanyahu is killing our children and will pay the price. The ground invasion doesn't frighten us and the occupation army will sink in Gaza's mud." Hamas wants Israel and Egypt, whose military-backed government is at odds with the Palestinian Islamists, to lift border restrictions that have deepened Gaza's economic hardship and unemployment. UN aid to Gaza: The United Nations said it was stepping up emergency aid to Gaza, where Israel's military offensive has made water shortages worse and stoked fears of more sewage contamination and water-borne diseases. On Tuesday, U.N. aid agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that after years of Gaza's water system deteriorating, damage from the attacks meant the whole coastal strip was facing a water crisis within days. "We are still very concerned about the water supply in Gaza, about half of the population are without water supply at this time," U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokeswoman, Amanda Pitt, told a news briefing in Geneva.
POSITIONS German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday there was a "new quality" to weapons used by the Palestinian territory's dominant Islamist Hamas group against Israel and added that countries that come under attack must be allowed to defend themselves. "Both sides must accept painful compromises but we stand by the side of Israel when it comes to self-defense," she said at a news conference in Berlin.
Fabius will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Egypt and Netanyahu in Israel among other leaders, the source said.
Speaking with reporters in Cairo, Abbas demanded Israel stop its offensive and said the ground operation would "lead to more bloodshed and complicate efforts to end the aggression", according to Egyptian State media.