News Service from House Harris

MID: Israelis detail combat sorties over Gaza

JERUSALEM, Jan 1 AP - For an Israeli pilot, bombing a Hamas missile launcher is like driving a car with a GPS road finder: All he does is drive where the machines tell him to go.

In five days, Israeli jet fighters have flown 500 bombing missions, backed up by hundreds more combat sorties by helicopter gunships and surveillance aircraft, both manned and unmanned, a senior officer said on Wednesday.

The targets included command posts of the Islamic militant movement, some 130 missile launch sites, munitions dumps and individuals who appeared to be carrying weapons. Also among them was a Hamas centre, the Islamic University, which the officer described as a weapons research facility.

He said 95 per cent of the targets were hit, and no major targets remained standing.

Now the objective is to hunt down missile launchers and fighters one-by-one, said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

Describing a typical mission, the officer said it often begins when spy planes identify trucks or fighters transporting what could be a missile launcher.

Information on the target is fed into the command centre, where a commander clears the mission. The data is relayed to the weapons system on board an F16 jet fighter, which plots the target. The pilot flies into position, and the bomb is released automatically, guided by laser beam onto the missile launcher.

"Just like a GPS telling you exactly where you are, we know exactly where the target is," he said.

As the officer outlined the precision bombing, the reach of Israeli intelligence became apparent.

Seeking to avoid civilian casualties, he said, an automated telephone service dials the phones of residents of a targeted building, warning them to evacuate. He shrugged when asked how Israel obtained the numbers.

Since the air strikes began on Saturday, most of the nearly 400 casualties have been Hamas fighters or officials, but dozens of civilians also have been killed.