Jerusalem [Israel], October 11: Israeli air strikes hammered Gaza on Tuesday, razing entire districts and filling morgues with dead Palestinians as Israel took revenge for the Hamas assaults that have triggered some of the worst blood-letting in 75 years of conflict.
Across the barrier wall enclosing the coastal enclave, Israeli soldiers collected the last of Israel's dead four days after Hamas gunmen rampaged through towns, killing hundreds of people in the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel's history.
Hamas militants holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage had threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit, but as night fell on Tuesday there was no indication they had done so.
But Israel's defence minister said its forces were gearing up for a ground offensive.
And on Israel's northern border, a salvo of rockets was fired from southern Lebanon towards Israel, prompting Israeli shelling in return, three security sources said. The exchange signalled the prospect that the violence could lead to a wider war.
Israel's embassy in Washington said the death toll from the weekend Hamas attacks had surpassed 1,000. The victims were overwhelmingly civilians, gunned down in homes, on streets or at an outdoor dance party. Scores of Israelis and some foreigners were captured and taken to Gaza as hostages, some paraded through the streets.
Gaza's health ministry said Israel's retaliatory air strikes had killed at least 830 people and wounded 4,250 up to Tuesday. The strikes intensified on Tuesday night, shaking the ground and sending columns of smoke and flames into the sky.
The United Nations said more than 180,000 Gazans had been made homeless, many huddling on streets or in schools.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, speaking to soldiers near the Gaza fence, said: "Hamas wanted a change and it will get one. What was in Gaza will no longer be."
At the morgue in Gaza's Khan Younis hospital, bodies were laid on the ground on stretchers with names written on their bellies. Medics called for relatives to pick up bodies quickly because there was no more space for the dead.
A municipal building was hit while being used as an emergency shelter. Survivors there spoke of many dead.
Two members of Hamas' political office, Jawad Abu Shammala and Zakaria Abu Maamar, were killed in an air strike in Khan Younis, a Hamas official said.
They were the first senior Hamas members killed since Israel began pounding the enclave. Israel said Abu Shammala had led a number of operations targeting Israeli civilians.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Israeli strikes had since Saturday destroyed more than 22,600 residential units and 10 health facilities and damaged 48 schools.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, who denounced the Hamas attacks, said civilians had been harmed in Israeli strikes on tower blocks, schools and U.N. buildings.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
