JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Saturday that Israel should expand its massive raid of northern Gaza, the army's biggest and deadliest offensive in more than four years of conflict with the Palestinians.The army says the incursion, which began Tuesday and has killed 47 Palestinians, is aimed at rooting out militants who fire rockets at Israeli targets.
"We must expand the areas of operation to ward off the (militant) launchers from the areas within the firing range of the rockets into Jewish towns over the border," Sharon told Israel Radio in his first public comments on the raid.
Sharon and his security cabinet had ordered the army to carve out a "buffer zone" to halt rocket strikes that have fueled right-wing criticism of his plan to pull out all soldiers and Jewish settlers from Gaza by the end of 2005.
"We must operate in Gaza in a way that will prevent attacks on settlements now and during the withdrawal," he said.
"It's necessary to change the situation in Gaza, to hit the militants and the heads of terror groups and those who create weapons that target us."
Nearly 200 tanks and armored vehicles have been operating around three refugee camps in the area in a massive offensive mounted after a Hamas rocket attack killed two Israeli toddlers in a border town Wednesday.
