Ismail Haneya, deposed Palestinian prime minister of Hamas, accused Israel on Saturday for committing "awful massacres against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip."

Haneya and Hamas government officials as wells as senior Hamas leaders were hiding in fear they might be targeted by Israel. However, Haneya showed up on Saturday night on al-Aqsa Television station run by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

"The Palestinian people have never witnessed an awful and ugly massacre like this," said Haneya in a statement he made to the Gaza-based Hamas television station.

Meanwhile, Damascus-based Hamas' political bureau chief Khaled Mash'al called on Saturday for a new Intifada, or uprising against Israel in the aftermath of an unprecedented and intensive Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

"I call on the Palestinian people to go for a third Intifada," Mash'al told the Qatari Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel. He had called for two Intifada against both Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

"I call for a military Intifada against the Zionist enemy as well as a peaceful Intifada internally," a reference to Hamas's power struggle with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas whose government is based in the West Bank.

Israel began a military operation called "the poured lead" on the Gaza Strip in response to homemade rockets attacks carried out by Hamas and other factions' militants on southern Israeli towns and cities in the vicinity of the enclave.

The operation began by carrying out intensive airstrikes on Hamas police installations all over the Gaza Strip, killing and wounding hundreds of Palestinians. Most of them were Hamas police officers.

Mo'aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the death toll in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Israeli airstrikes hit to 225 people killed and around 750 wounded.

Israel said that the intensive airstrike was the first stage of a large-scale military operation against the Hamas movement that has been ruling the Gaza Strip after it routed President Abbas' security forces last year.

Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, said in a statement that the Islamic movement "will not surrender," adding that "the Palestinian people and Hamas movement "would keep their resistance against the Zionist enemy."

(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2008)