Graphic: map of the conflict | Cockpit Video: Israel's aerial onslaught | Pictures: Gaza violence | Richard Beeston: Analysis | Mick Hume: Opinion | Leading article: Bitter harvest | West Bank youths call for third intifada | Obama’s peace hopes shattered | Arab protests erupt

Israel broadened its air campaign in the Gaza Strip today, bombing the territory’s main university campus, the Interior Ministry and other targets as the toll from the three-day blitz against Hamas reached at least 310 dead and more than 1,400 wounded.

The Islamist factions inside Gaza were still firing rockets into southern Israel, hitting the city of Ashkelon with longer-range Grad missiles that killed a construction worker and wounded several others.

With no clear end in sight to the battle, Israel has massed tanks and mobilised thousands of reservist soldiers in preparation for a ground offensive into the Strip, which would trigger a bloody fight to the death with Hamas’s 1,500 fighters and local supporters.

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It is Hamas’ actions that have precipitated the current, inevitable, crisis

Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor

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Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, said that Israel was in an “all-out war against Hamas”. Israeli leaders have vowed to change the situation in Gaza totally, although they have not explained how they would achieve that.

“Our goal is not to reoccupy Gaza Strip,” Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister who hopes to become prime minister in February elections, said, before adding: “Not now.”

Israel has deemed the opening salvoes of the war a success, saying that it had caught Hamas off guard with its furious attacks on Saturday, and that it will continue strikes to deplete the Islamists’ military ranks and arsenals.

There were hints that Hamas might be reconsidering its staunch position in the wake of the onslaught. In Senegal, which currently presides over the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the Foreign Ministry said that Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader-in-exile, had said that he was ready to renew a ceasefire that expired ten days ago if Israel ended its bombardment and allowed supplies into Gaza.

“The Hamas leader said he was ready to sign such an accord in a place to be chosen by common consent between the two sides,” the ministry said in a statement. The Hamas leader had previously made public calls for all Palestinians to rise up in a third intifada against Israeli occupation.

Hamas rejected Israeli calls for a new truce last week when the previous six-month ceasefire expired. Now Israel says that it cannot make a fresh deal with Hamas, likening it to the West signing a détente with al-Qaeda.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, hardened the British Government’s response to the attack by warning that the blitz on Gaza could encourage further extremism. He reiterated Britain’s call for an immediate ceasefire.

“I think that any innocent loss of life is unacceptable and in this case there have been massive casualties, some of them civilians and some of them children. That is one reason we have called for a ceasefire,” he told the Today programme on Radio 4.

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