Palestinians dug in behind walls and embankments in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday, bracing for a major assault after Israel sent in troops and tanks and bombarded bridges and a power station to pressure militants to release a captured soldier. No casualties were reported.

It was Israel’s first ground offensive since it pulled all of its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza last summer, and Palestinians, holed up at home, were bracing for a major strike. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel wouldn’t balk at “extreme action” to bring the soldier home, but had no intention of reoccupying Gaza.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deplored the incursion as a “crime against humanity,” and a leading Hamas politician issued a call to arms against the Israeli troops.

Overnight, Israeli tanks and soldiers began taking up positions east of the Gaza town of Rafah under cover of tank shells, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said.

Israeli warplanes fired at least nine missiles at Gaza’s only power station, cutting electricity to 65 percent of the Gaza Strip, engineers at the station said. The station’s three functioning turbines and a gasoline reservoir were engulfed in flames, raising the specter of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where water pumps are powered by electricity.

The Israeli military said in a statement that three bridges were attacked “to impair the ability of the terrorists to transfer the kidnapped soldier,” Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19. Knocking down the bridges cut Gaza in two, Palestinian security officials said.

Witnesses reported heavy artillery shelling near the long-closed Gaza airport into a village east of Rafah, and warplanes also flew low over Gaza City, rocking the city with sonic booms and shattering windows.

<B>Bring Gilad home</B>

Troops in Israel backed up the assault, firing artillery into Gaza.

“We won’t hesitate to carry out extreme action to bring Gilad back to his family,” Olmert said. “All the military activity that started overnight will continue in the coming days.”

“We do not intend to reoccupy Gaza. We do not intend to stay there. We have one objective, and that is to bring Gilad home,” he added.

Olmert repeated that Israel will not negotiate Shalit’s release with militant groups.

Shalit was taken captive on Sunday during a Palestinian attack on a military post in southern Israel.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel would try to assassinate Khaled Mashaal, a Syrian-based Hamas leader who Israel thinks ordered the soldier’s capture.

“He is definitely in our sights ... he is a target,” Ramon told Army Radio. “Khaled Mashaal, as someone who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, is definitely a target.”

Hamas militants and allied factions claimed responsibility for the attack on a southern military post on Sunday in which Shalit was captured and two soldiers were killed. The Palestinian government has called for the soldier’s release, but Israel thinks the Syria-based leaders called the shots. Abbas deplored the Israeli invasion in a statement.

“The president considers the aggression that targeted the civilian infrastructures to be collective punishment and a crime against humanity,” the statement said. Abbas, it added, urged the US and international Mideast negotiators to intervene to halt the operation.

Normally bustling streets in southern Gaza were eerily deserted midmorning, with people holed up inside their homes. A few children from nearby Bedouin encampments played in the streets, and two women in a donkey cart drove near the airport in Rafah.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt – Gaza’s main link to the outside world – has been closed since the attack Sunday in which the Israeli soldier was taken captive. Usually, there is some activity in the area, even when the passage is closed, but yesterday, it was empty.

A small grocery near the long-closed airport at Rafah was open, but no one was inside except the owner, 45-year-old Allah Abu Jazr.