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Israeli warplanes have resumed their air strikes on Gaza Strip, hitting targets across the territory, including a mosque and a television station.
Two bodies were retrieved from the rubble of a mosque near Gaza City's Shifa hospital early on Sunday, witnesses said.
The blast, just after midnight, blew out windows at the hospital, hospital officials said.
The studio building of al-Aqsa TV was also destroyed, but the station remained on air with a mobile unit.
Palestinians counted about attacks in the early hours of Sunday, after more than 225 people had been killed and hundreds of other injured in air raids the previous day as Israel launched Operation Cast Lead.
Ehud Barack, Israel's defense minister, has warned that the air raids could be followed by a major ground incursion into the Gaza Strip.
"We are ready for anything. If it's necessary to deploy ground forces to defend our citizens, we will do so," Barak's spokesman quoted him as saying on Sunday.
Israeli television has reported that hundreds of infantry and armored forces were massing on the border of the territory.
No truce
Earlier Barak rejected calls for a new truce between the Palestinian Hamas movement and Israel.
"For us to be asked to have a ceasefire with Hamas is like asking you [the United States] to have a ceasefire with al-Qaeda. It's something we cannot really accept," he told Fox News from Tel Aviv.
Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, described the assault as a war on the Palestinian faction which took full control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after pushing out security force loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
Carnage
Gaza witnesses reported heavy damage after dozens of missiles were fired from helicopter gunships and fighter jets on about 40 different locations in the strip on Saturday.
Hamas "not shaken"
Many of the dead in the series of attacks were police officers, including Tawfiq Jabber, the Gaza chief of police.
The toll is expected to rise further, with bodies still lying buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Hospitals, already suffering from shortages due to an 18-month blockade on the Gaza Strip, said they were struggling to cope with the number of injured, which included women and children.
Gaza is densely populated. Its 1.5 million residents were already experiencing shortages in power and basic supplies due to the siege which is widely condemned by human rights movements as a collective punishment.
'Ugly massacre'
Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, called the assault Israel's "ugliest massacre".
"I call on Palestinians to remain united and together in the face of this crime, in the face of this massacre and continued aggression, targeting our soil and our citizens," he said.
Olmert, speaking in Tel Aviv on Saturday, said the operation would take time and called on Israelis to be "patient".
Long operation
Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Jerusalam, said: "People have been forewarned about further operations of this intensity for many days to come, with more sorties flown by Israeli planes and helicopters and more targets in Gaza.
Mousa Abu Morzouz, the deputy leader of Hamas, said: "Nobody in this world can accept what happened and the Israeli aggression ... [we expect] the international community to stand against this and say that it is not acceptable."
Mustafa Barghouthi, the former Palestinian information minister, said: "This is not an attack on Hamas. It is an attack on the whole population and the free will of the people of Gaza."
He accused Israel of committing war crimes and demanded that Abbas and his government stop all relations with Israel.
'Only just beginning'
Avi Benayahu, an Israeli military spokesman said: "The operation against Hamas is "only just beginning".
The air raids follow a breakdown of a six-month-old Israel-Hamas truce earlier this month.
The ceasefire expired on December 19, with Hamas arguing that Israel had violated the truce by preventing vital supplies from entering the Strip.
Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip to receive injured people, Egyptian officials said. Ambulances have been sent to the crossing and two Egyptian hospitals emptied to take in the wounded.
Hamas won control of the Palestinian Legislative Council in elections in January 2005. The international community refused to accept a Hamas-led government, demanding that the faction recognize Israel and 'renounce violence'. Economic sanctions by the EU and US followed.
PHOTO CAPTION
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli air strike in the southern town of Rafah.
Al-Jazeera
