Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said "Operation Cast Lead" against the Islamist movement, which has also left some 700 wounded, will continue "as long as necessary.

"The battle will be long and difficult, but the time has come to act and to fight," he said.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called in Damascus for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel and promised new suicide attacks.

Following mid-morning bombings, in which some 60 warplanes struck more than 50 targets in just a few minutes, Hamas fired more than 70 rockets and mortars into Israel killing one person and injuring four, according to a new Israeli army toll.

Israeli air strikes continued sporadically throughout the day and into the night.

Two Hamas members were killed in an Israeli helicopter raid in eastern Gaza City while they were preparing to fire more rockets into Israel, a medical source said.

Two other Palestinians were wounded in that late Saturday attack, as Israeli helicopters also targeted four metals factories in the city where rockets are believed to be stored or built.

A mosque near the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City was damaged when Israeli air-ground missiles targeted two Hamas policemen standing near its doors. Both men were injured, witnesses said.

"We will not stand down and we will not cave in even if (the Israelis) should eradicate the Gaza Strip or kill thousands of us," Ismail Haniya, who heads the Hamas government, said in a defiant radio address.

Meshaal called for a "military intifada against the enemy" and said "resistance will continue through suicide missions."

Hamas has not carried out a suicide attack in Israel since January 2005.

He said that for there to be any talks with the people of Gaza, "the blockade must be lifted and the crossings (from Israel) opened... notably that in Rafah," which leads to Egypt.

Israel imposed a blockade after Hamas seized power in Gaza last year, but let in dozens of truckloads of humanitarian aid on Friday.

The White House said only Hamas could end the cycle of violence by putting a stop to the rocket fire on Israel.

"These people are nothing but thugs, and so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas," spokesman Gordon Johndroe said at George W. Bush's Texas ranch, where the president is preparing to spend the new year.

"If Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel, then Israel would not have a need for strikes in Gaza," Johndroe said. "What we've got to see is Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel.

"The United States holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire; we want the ceasefire restored. We're concerned about the humanitarian situation and want all parties concerned to work to make sure the people of Gaza get the humanitarian assistance they need," said Johndroe.

He was referring to a six-month truce mediated by Egypt, which ended on December 19, with Hamas refusing to renew it.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged Israel will do its utmost to avert a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

"The people in Gaza do not deserve to suffer because of the killers and murderers of the terrorist organisation," he said, referring to Hamas.

He insisted that Israel had only hit Hamas targets, including command structures and rocket-manufacturing installations.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for an immediate halt to the violence, as did the European Union, Russia, Britain and France, while several Middle Eastern states and the Arab League slammed Israel.

Members of the UN Security Council were set to hold consultations late Saturday, a UN spokesperson said, adding it was unclear if there would also be a formal meeting.

The Arab League will hold an extraordinary summit in Doha on January 2 to discuss the crisis, diplomats in Cairo said.

In Gaza, thick clouds of smoke billowed into the sky. Mangled, bloodied and often charred corpses littered the pavement around Hamas security compounds, and frantic relatives flooded hospitals.

Medics said civilians had been hit, but the majority of the victims appeared to be members of Hamas, branded a terror group by Israel and the West.

Hamas said the strikes destroyed its security structures across Gaza and killed three senior officials -- the Gaza police chief, the police commander for central Gaza and the head of the group's bodyguard unit.

Dr Moawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services, put the toll at 225 dead and 700 injured, 140 of them seriously.

Later, a medical source added three more to the toll with witnesses saying that two of them died in the east of Gaza City while they were preparing to fire rockets towards Israel.

The bombing came after days of spiralling violence, with militants firing rockets and Israel vowing a fiery response.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who brokered the six-month truce, slammed the "Israeli military aggression on the Gaza Strip" and blamed "Israel, as an occupying force, for the victims and the wounded."

The bombardment set off angry demonstrations in Israel's Arab towns and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as protests in countries around the region.

It came less than two months ahead of Israeli elections on February 10.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the head of the governing Kadima party and one of the front-runners for the premier's chair, said that "today there is no other option than a military operation."

Violence in and around Gaza has flared since the truce ended, and it escalated dramatically on Wednesday.

earlier related report
Mangled bodies, wailing relatives at Gaza hospital
Relatives wail as the mangled bodies of loved ones are brought into Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on Saturday following Israeli air strikes that killed at least 225 people in the Palestinian enclave.

Ambulances and private cars rush those wounded or killed in the punishing raids to the hospital, where staff use sheets as makeshift stretchers.

In some cases, a single stretcher is used to carry several bodies. Torn limbs fall to the blood-soiled floor.

There is no space left in the morgue and bodies are piled up in the emergency room and in the corridors, while many of the severely wounded scream in pain.

Overworked doctors and nurses can only deal with the most pressing cases.

Most of the victims wear the uniforms of the security services of Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and whose installations were targeted in the attacks Israel says were in response to rocket attacks by Gaza militants.

Morgue employees use megaphones to ask parents who throng the entrance to identify their loved ones and take the bodies for burial.

"My brother was still alive when he arrived here, and was talking to me but no one could help him. He died," said Ahmed al-Gharabli, his voice shaking and tears streaming down his cheeks. His brother Baha was a Hamas policeman.

The bloodied body of another policeman, Mohammed Abu Shaaban, is carried on the same stretcher as that of a girl aged about 10 who was hit in the stomach.

Abu Obeida al-Jarah, a police commander who was inside one of the buildings targeted by the Israeli bombs, escaped unharmed.

"We managed to get out and immediately came here to identify the bodies," he said.

"It is truly a massacre and it will not go unpunished. The blood of policemen cannot be unavenged."

The health minister in the Hamas government, Bassem Naim, worried about the dire lack of resources to deal with the large number of victims.

"Our means are too modest to respond to this terrible massacre," he told AFP.

At the best of times the health sector is stretched to the limit in this impoverished and overcrowded enclave that has been the subject of crippling sanctions since Hamas seized power in June 2007

Barefoot, her headscarf dropped on her shoulders, Asmaa Abdo rushed to the hospital immediately after the raids to inquire about the fate of her two sons, who are training to become policemen.

"I was told my sons are both dead but nobody at the hospital can tell me whether that is true," she cries, shouting insults at moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Arab states she feels failed to do anything to protect Gaza.

Abbas's forces were ousted from Gaza in the Hamas takeover.

Near the hospital, a mountain of rubble marks the spot where a 10-storey building that housed a Hamas prisoner support association once stood. Bulldozers clear the ruins as rescuers continue a grim search that has already turned up five bodies, all torn to pieces.

Verses from the Koran, the Muslim holy book, echo across the streets, broadcast from the minarets of the city's mosques. Women in tears head to the hospital.

Al-Aqsa, the Hamas television station, broadcasts images of mangled, bloodied bodies lying on the ground. A message on the screen proclaims: "The Holocaust continues" and the anchorman denounces what he calls the silence and the complicity of some Arab countries.

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