Israeli soldiers massed near the Gaza border Saturday as tanks and armored vehicles took up positions, raising the specter of an imminent ground invasion after Palestinian militants appeared to raise the stakes by firing rockets at the holy city of Jerusalem.
The mobilization of troops along the Israel-Gaza border follows news Friday that the Israeli government authorized the call up of 75,000 reservists, the latest move in Israel's days-old military campaign to stop rockets attacks from Gaza.
"We are in the process of expanding the campaign," Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, told Israel's Channel 2.
Convoys carrying tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers rolled toward the Gaza border Saturday, part of what the IDF described as 30,000 troops that were being mobilized along the Israeli-Gaza border.
The constant din of drones could be heard at the border, where a CNN television crew observed an Israeli forward reconnaissance patrol set up behind a tree line to avoid incoming rockets from Gaza.
Q&A: Gaza strikes could be beginning of ground attack
World leaders and the United Nations have called on Israeli and Palestinian governing bodies to show restraint, fearing at the very least a possible repeat of Israel's 2008 invasion that left at least 1,400 people dead.
Eight people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Saturday, raising to 39 the number killed since Israel's military operation, dubbed Pillar of Defense, began Wednesday, according to Palestinian government and health officials. Israel is reporting three deaths from a Hamas rocket attack in the southern community of Kiryat Malachi and at least nine injuries, including three soldiers wounded in a rocket attack.
More than 330 in Gaza have been wounded since Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials.
For days, Israel has been using airstrikes to target what it describes as rocket-launching sites operated by Hamas and other militant groups. Israel airstrikes have hit more more than 830 targets in Gaza since the operation began, the IDF said.
On Saturday, Israel stepped up its air campaign, leveling the Palestinian Cabinet headquarters where a day earlier Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil met with Hamas officials, according to Hamas TV.
Israeli airstrikes also targeted the Hamas Ministry of the Interior, a police compound, the headquarters of senior Palestinian political leader Ismail Haniyeh and a Hamas training facility, according to a statement released by IDF.
"Overnight, the IDF targeted a terror activity site in the central Gaza Strip, deliberately located and hidden inside a mosque, in the vicinity of a school," the IDF said, accusing Hamas of using "the Palestinian civilian population as a human shield."
It was unclear from the statement whether the mosque was targeted in the airstrike. The IDF did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment, and Palestinian officials did not identify the destruction of a mosque in its latest list of buildings and facilities damaged and destroyed in the Israeli airstrikes.
Palestinian militants, meanwhile, launched a barrage of rockets at southern Israel, including four that hit the coastal community of Ashdod, the IDF said.
One of the rockets his a house and another landed near a kindergarten, the IDF said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Among the airstrikes on Saturday, Hamas accused Israeli warplanes of hitting an apartment building in the northern Gaza community of Jabalia Camp, killing at least three people and wounding more than 30, according to Hamas-run al Aqsa TV.
Footage broadcast by al-Aqsa showed people clamoring over smoking ruins, searching for survivors.
From northern Gaza, Mohammed Sulaiman said he could hear bombs intermittently falling from Israeli warplanes as well as, from the other side, rockets periodically whistling toward Israel.
"The situation is totally dangerous here, and it is not safe to be out in the street," Sulaiman said.
The IDF said 380 rockets launched from Gaza had hit Israel since midweek, while 230 of those were intercepted by its missile defense system.
Among the rockets fired Friday were two that targeted Jerusalem, setting off air raid sirens. The rockets struck an open area south of the city, with Hamas claiming responsibility for firing the rockets toward Jerusalem.
Sirens sounded, too, in Tel Aviv, prompting people to scramble for cover, witnesses said.
No damage was reported, but Israelis consider the attacks on its major population centers to be an escalation, said Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
Israeli authorities said the military campaign has hit more than 600 targets for what it calls terror activity and stifled rocket launches out of Gaza, a claim denied by Hamas' military wing.
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