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Rockets rain on Israel

Israeli airstrikes continued to take aim on Hamas militants’ strongholds (above).

Israeli airstrikes continued to take aim on Hamas militants’ strongholds (above). (AP)

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Palestinian rockets rained down on Israel yesterday — targeting Tel Aviv with a barrage that threatened to push the Middle East into all-out war.

Air-raid sirens wailed, and panicked residents ran for cover in the city, Israel’s commercial and cultural capital.

At least three of the hundreds of rockets Hamas sent hurtling toward Israel from Gaza were aimed at the city of 3 million — the first attack on Tel Aviv in 20 years.

Adrian Cisser, a 35-year-old electrician, was in a bicycle shop in the center of the city when an air-raid siren went off.

“People on the street started running,” he said. “The public shelter nearby was locked, so we just stayed in the shop, and two minutes after it started, we heard this big bang.”

In the southern suburb of Rishon Lezion, where a Hamas rocket landed in an empty field, a siren sent people rushing for shelter.

“There is panic in our house, and we can hear shouts from the street,” a resident who gave only her first name, Lital, told the Israeli news site YNet. “Children were running away, trying to find shelter.”

The two other rockets aimed at Tel Aviv landed in the Mediterranean Sea.

Residents of the southern town of Kiryat Malachi weren’t so lucky.

A rocket attack there hit a four-story building, killing two men and a pregnant woman. A 4-year-old boy and two babies were also injured.

Israel responded by moving troops and heavy weapons toward Gaza and authorizing the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, raising the specter of a full-fledged ground assault.

The fighting, the heaviest in four years, came after Israel launched a ferocious air assault Wednesday to stop repeated rocket fire from Gaza.

The top Hamas military chief was killed in that strike. Another 18 Palestinians have died over two days of fighting, including five kids and a pregnant woman.

Some 100 Palestinians have been wounded.

Israeli warplanes struck dozens of Hamas-linked targets in Gaza yesterday, sending booms echoing across the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip at regular intervals, followed by gray columns of smoke.

After nightfall, several explosions shook Gaza City minutes apart, a sign the strikes were not letting up. The military said the targets were 70 underground rocket-launching sites.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was hitting Hamas hard with surgical strikes. Israel will “continue to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people,” said Netanyahu, who is up for re-election in January.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he authorized the call-up of reservists, and the army said up to 30,000 additional troops could be activated.

“We will continue the attacks, and we will increase the attacks, and I believe we will obtain our objectives,” said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief.

Hamas, meanwhile, warned it would strike deeper inside Israel with Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets, acknowledging for the first time it has the long-range weapons. They’re capable of hitting targets 47 miles away — and Tel Aviv is only 40 miles outside of Gaza.

By nightfall Thursday, Hamas said it had fired more than 350 rockets into Israel.

Israel said 130 of the rockets were intercepted by an anti-missile shield.

Israel believes Hamas has significantly boosted its arsenal since the last Gaza war four years ago, adding weapons from Iran and from Libyan stockpiles plundered after the 2011 fall of the regime there.

“After four years, we became stronger. We have a strategy, and we became united with all the military wings in Gaza,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.

Israel is also facing a Hamas with a greater regional backing.

Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, led a chorus of denunciation of the Israeli strikes by allies of the Palestinians.

His prime minister, Hisham Kandil, will visit Gaza today with other Egyptian officials in a show of support for the enclave, an Egyptian Cabinet official said.

Israel promised that the delegation would not be harmed.

An Egyptian government source said officials accompanying Kandil would explore the possibility of brokering a cease-fire.

While Morsi is under domestic pressure to take a tough stance against Israel, Egypt gets $1.3 billion a year in US military aid and needs Washington’s help with its ailing economy.

President Obama spoke to Netanyahu, and the two agreed Hamas needs to stop its attacks on Israel to allow tensions to ease, the White House said.

He also spoke to Morsi, and they agreed on the need to reduce the conflict as quickly as possible, officials said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said there is “no justification” for the rocket fire from Gaza and urged the militants to stop their “cowardly acts.”

Meanwhile, the NYPD said it was increasing security at synagogues and other Jewish and Israeli facilities.

About 60 pro-Israel demonstrators and 300 supporters of the Palestinians staged peaceful demonstrations yesterday on opposite sides of Second Avenue at East 42nd Street, near the Israeliconsulate.