Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
A man injured by bombing in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday that also killed one person.
GAZA CITY — Israel pressed its assault on the Gaza Strip early Sunday, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave a day after Israeli forces widened the onslaught from mostly military targets to centers of government infrastructure including the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister.
The crash of explosions pierced the Gaza City quiet several times throughout the early morning, with one attack injuring several journalists at a communications building, witnesses said. A rocket fired from Gaza ploughed through the roof of an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon but there were no immediate reports of casualties there.
Palestinian news agencies reported that two children were killed in a predawn strike on Sunday in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it had “targeted dozens of underground launchers” overnight and also hit what it called a Hamas training base and command center. The Israeli Navy “targeted terror sites on the northern Gaza shore line,” the statement said, in repeated rounds of multiple missiles that could be easily heard.
The attacks continued despite talks in Cairo that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said Saturday night he thought could soon result in a ceasefire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would consider a comprehensive ceasefire if the launches from Gaza stop.
The attack on office of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, one of several on government installations, came a day after he hosted his Egyptian counterpart in that very building on Friday, a sign of Hamas’s new legitimacy in a radically redrawn Arab world. That stature was underscored Saturday by a visit to Gaza from the Tunisian foreign minister and the rapid convergence in Cairo of two Hamas allies, the prime minister of Turkey and the crown prince of Qatar, for talks with the Egyptian president and the chairman of Hamas on a possible cease-fire.
But as the fighting entered its fifth day, with Israel continuing preparations for a ground invasion, the conflict showed no sign of abating.
On Saturday, Gaza militants again fired long-range missiles at Tel Aviv, among nearly 60 that soared into Israel during the course of the say. Israel said it hit more than 200 targets overnight Friday to Saturday in Gaza, and continued with afternoon strikes on the home of a Hamas commander and on a motorcycle-riding militant.
The White House reiterated its strong support for Israel. Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, described rocket fire from Gaza as “the precipitating factor for the conflict.”
“We believe Israel has a right to defend itself, and they’ll make their own decisions about the tactics that they use in that regard,” Mr. Rhodes told reporters on Air Force One en route to Asia.
Hamas health officials said Saturday that 45 Palestinians had been killed and 385 wounded since Wednesday’s escalation in the cross-border battle. In Israel, 3 Israeli civilians have died and 63 have been injured. Four soldiers were also wounded on Saturday.
Two rockets were fired at Tel Aviv on Saturday. One landed harmlessly, probably at sea. The other was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system in the sky above the city. An Iron Dome antimissile battery had been hastily deployed near the city on Saturday in response to the threat of longer-range rockets.
Since Wednesday, Iron Dome has knocked 245 rockets out of the sky, the military said, while 500 have struck Israel. The American-financed system is designed to intercept only rockets streaking toward towns and cities and to ignore those likely to strike open ground.
There have been failures — on Saturday a rocket crashed into an apartment block in the southern port city of Ashdod, injuring five people — but officials have put its success rate at 90 percent.
Analysts said there is no clear end to the conflict in sight, since Israel neither wants to re-engage in Gaza nor to eliminate Hamas and leave the territory to the chaos of more militant factions.
“Ultimately,” said Efraim Halevy, a former chief of Israel’s intelligence service, “both sides want Hamas to remain in control, strange as it sounds.”
But Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Al Azhar University here, cautioned that “there is no military solution to the Gaza problem.”
“There has to be a political settlement at the end of this,” he said. “Without that, this conflict is just going to go on and on.”
Israel Broadens Its Bombing in Gaza to Include Government Sites
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Israel Broadens Its Bombing in Gaza to Include Government Sites
