Sharon calls for expansion of Israel's Gaza offensive
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-03 08:13

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel should expand its massive raid of northern Gaza, one of the army's deadliest offensives in more than four years of conflict with the Palestinians.

The Israeli army killed nine militants in and around the Gaza Strip on Saturday, raising to 47 the number of Palestinian deaths in the massive offensive, aimed at rooting out militants who fire rockets at Israeli towns.

A Palestinian relative of Islamic Jihad militant Eid Afanah, 45, who was killed by Israeli troops, mourns during his funeral at the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, October 2, 2004. [Reuters]

"We must expand the areas of operation to ward off the (militant) launchers from the areas where the firing range of rockets reach Jewish towns over the border," Sharon told Israel Radio in his first public comments on the raid. Nearly 200 tanks and armored vehicles seized control of 3.5 square miles of the coastal territory in an operation mounted after a rocket attack killed two Israeli toddlers in a border town on Wednesday, witnesses said.

Sharon and his security cabinet had ordered the army to carve out a "buffer zone" to halt such assaults that have fueled right-wing criticism of his plan to pull soldiers and Jewish settlers out of Gaza by the end of 2005.

"We must operate in Gaza in a way that will prevent attacks on settlements now and during the withdrawal," Sharon said.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's leadership condemned the Israeli incursion as "ugly state terror and war crimes." It also signaled that militants should stop rocket attacks, saying they give Israelis "the pretext to pursue their crimes."

The Palestinian dead from the operation, codenamed "Days of Reckoning," include civilians as well as fighters. Israeli fatalities were two soldiers and a woman jogger.

For the first time in the conflict, Israeli forces moved deep into the Gaza Strip's biggest refugee camp of Jabalya, a shabby mass of buildings that is home to some 100,000 people and a base for Hamas militants firing rockets into Israel.

The cycle of bloodshed has sent Sharon scrambling to counter rightist critics who say his Gaza pullout plan has emboldened militants trying to give the impression Israel is being driven out. Israel is determined to smash armed groups before leaving.

Hamas, a militant group sworn to Israel's destruction, has threatened to use its rockets to hit towns deeper inside Israeli territory. The Israeli army says gunmen have been upgrading rockets, which may increase their firing range.

Sharon dismissed the comments, saying: "Such words do not matter. (Israeli forces) are taking the required steps to preserve the well-being of Israel's citizens. It is our duty and it will be done."

Militants have fired hundreds of Qassam rockets, with an estimated range of 5 miles. Only one reached the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon, causing no casualties.

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