Israeli shelling kills 24 civilians, including two families

Israel pounded Gaza from the air, sea and ground on the second full day of its ground offensive Monday, with the air force, navy and artillery backing its ground troops and their shelling killing at least 24 Palestinian civilians -- 13 of them children of two families.

A tank shell destroyed a house during fighting in Gaza City's southeastern Zaytoun neighbourhood before dawn, killing 13 members of one family, Assamouni, including the father, mother and eight children aged four to 15, hospital officials said. Ambulances were able to reach the house only after daylight, witnesses said.

A naval shell later also struck a house in western Gaza City's Beach refugee camp Monday morning, killing a father, mother and their five children, the chief of the emergency room of Gaza City's Shifa hospital, Haythem Dababish, told DPA.

In Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza city near the border with Israel, four more civilians died when a tank shell hit a mourning tent set up near the home of a paramedic killed Sunday, the town's hospital said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was due to arrive in Israel late Monday as part of a trip to the Middle East that is to include talks in Cairo, Ramallah and Jerusalem, as international efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution continued amid the heavy fighting.

But keeping up the pressure, Israeli fighter jets meanwhile struck some 30 more targets in the coastal enclave overnight, the military said.

Israeli ground troops, which entered the strip late Saturday under the cover of darkness, have taken control of areas from which Palestinian militants have been firing rockets at southern Israel.

While thus far largely avoiding populated areas, the troops have also encircled Gaza City, under heavy fire, and cut off the north from the south of the strip by taking control of a key east-west road leading from the Karni border crossing, east of the city, toward the coast.

The troop's advance sparked heavy clashes with local Hamas fighters.

Since Israel launched its Operation 'Cast Lead' nine days ago - aimed at curbing seven years of rocket and mortar attacks against its southern towns and villages - more than 520 Palestinians have been killed and at least 2,500 injured.

Hamas, which has kept one Israeli soldier captive in Gaza since June 2005 as a bargaining chip to free Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons, has threatened to use the ground offensive to capture more Israeli soldiers. Israel Radio reported Monday that the Israeli army foiled one such attempt by Hamas fighters the previous day.

At least five Israeli soldiers were moderately injured overnight, Israel Radio reported, and an unknown number of Palestinians. One Israeli soldier was killed and some 31 injured in the fighting Sunday.

Four Israelis have also died by Palestinian rocket attacks since the Israeli operation began Dec 27.

12 Killed in Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza

Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli aircraft launched an assault on the radical Islamic Jihad organization from the skies over Gaza, killing the group's overall commander and nine other militants in three fiery strikes ending early Tuesday.

A fourth attack on a security post in southern Gaza killed two Hamas militants, that group said.

In an e-mail sent to reporters, Islamic Jihad said it would retaliate for its losses with suicide attacks inside Israel, threatening ``a wave of martyrdom operations.''

Thousands of Gazans took to the streets in funeral processions for the dead militants, whose bodies and coffins were draped with black Islamic Jihad flags. In northern Gaza, bullets from the rifles of mourners severed an electric wire, which fell, injuring five people, medics said.

Four of the Islamic Jihad militants were targeted as they emerged from morning prayers Tuesday at a northern Gaza mosque. Six others died when Israeli aircraft blasted two cars in Gaza City after nightfall Monday.

``There is no doubt that this is a big loss,'' Khader Habib, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza, told The Associated Press.

The deadly strikes against Islamic Jihad are part of a stepped-up Israeli offensive against Gaza militants who fire near-daily rocket barrages at southern Israeli border communities. Islamic Jihad, a small radical group with ties to Iran, has taken responsibility for most of the barrages.

Gaza's militant Hamas rulers aren't heavily involved in the cross-border attacks, but allow other radical factions, including its Islamic Jihad allies, to operate with impunity.

The airstrikes in Gaza came after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gained strong support for his moderate government at an international donors conference in Paris. Donors pledged $7.4 billion over the next three years, far more than he expected.

Abbas is locked in a deadly power struggle with Hamas, which overran Gaza in June after routing his fighters.

The fundraising followed the relaunch of formal peace talks with Israel. Negotiations got off to a rocky start over Israel's refusal to halt construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank - areas captured in the 1967 Mideast war that the Palestinians want as part of a future state.

On Tuesday, a top ally of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed swapping Israeli territory for disputed land where Jewish communities have been built.

``What I propose is that we reach an agreement with the Palestinians today over the principle of settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty and in return an exchange of territory,'' Vice Premier Haim Ramon said, becoming the first Israeli official to openly endorse the idea.

Abbas already has expressed support for a land swap.

The Israeli military said the three air attacks targeted militants involved in rocket fire at Israel.

``I'm very pleased with our achievements last night,'' Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defense minister, told Army Radio on Tuesday morning.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that in addition to targeting Israeli civilians those behind the rocket attacks also were seeking to sabotage the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

``Obviously we have to act to protect our people,'' he said. ``These extremists don't want to just kill innocent civilians they want to kill the peace process, they're the enemies of everyone who wants to see this peace process move forward.''

Palestinian militants fired rockets and mortar shells at Israel on Tuesday morning. Two shells hit an Israeli community, but did not result in casualties, the military said.

The target of the first Israeli airstrike in Gaza City late Monday was Majed Harazin, a senior Islamic Jihad militant in charge of rocket squads that have been firing at Israel, the military said.

Islamic Jihad spokesman Khaled el-Batch confirmed that Harazin was killed. The group said he was its top commander for the West Bank and Gaza, and he rarely traveled in vehicles for fear of an Israeli airstrike.

Another militant was killed and a third critically wounded in the airstrike, hospital officials said.

Islamic Jihad supporters gathered around the morgue and pledged revenge.

``The blood of our comrades will be the fuel for the rockets that will bring death and destruction to the Zionists,'' another Islamic Jihad spokesman, Abu Hamza, told The Associated Press.

In the second airstrike, shortly before midnight, the military said four militants were killed. The third strike, early Tuesday, killed four more of the group's men. Four civilians were wounded, medical officials said.

The attack on a Hamas security post in the southern town of Rafah killed two members of Hamas' security force, Hamas said. The military confirmed that it had carried out the strike.

Separately, Islamic Jihad retracted its announcement that its commander in the northern West Bank was killed by an undercover Israeli unit in Qabatiyeh village. The Israeli military had denied any knowledge of an assassination attempt there.

Israel tightens closure on Gaza, cuts fuel supplies

Indo Asian News Service
Last Updated: October 30, 2007


Tel Aviv, October 30: Israel has threatened to sever its economic and infrastructural ties with the Gaza Strip if rocket attacks from the area continued, a day after it began curbing fuel supplies to the impoverished coastal salient.

Further tightening its closure of the Strip, it also closed its Sufa border crossing with the southern Gaza Strip, one of two crossings that had remained open during the past months for the passage of humanitarian aid.

The only outlet now remaining open to humanitarian aid is the southern-most Kerem Shalom crossing, a military spokeswoman said Monday.

But only hours later Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz nixed a plan to curb electricity to the enclave, saying such a step could contravene a promise not to cause a humanitarian crisis in the Strip.

At a meeting on the issue in his office, Mazuz said that while Israel had the right to sever commercial and economic ties with the Strip - which it last month declared a 'hostile entity' - the plan to cut off electricity needed to be re-examined.

To cut supply of petrol and diesel

Israel began Sunday reducing its weekly supply of petrol to Gaza by 15 percent and of diesel by 13 percent.

It also planned to cut electricity by one percent - or 15 minutes each day - to those areas in the Strip from where the rockets are fired.

The electricity cut would have little impact and was meant mainly as a 'signal' to the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling the Strip, said Shlomo Dror, the spokesman for the defence ministry body charged with coordinating government policy with the military.

Israel however would not touch the supply of crude diesel to Gaza's main power plant, which used up some 1,740 litres a week, he said.

'We are sending a signal to the Palestinians. We tell them that the tendency is to go to a disengagement,' Dror told DPA.

'Israel won't keep supplying all that they want, when they fire Qassams at us. So Israel is saying, this equation mustn't exist.'

He said Israel decided to close the Sufa crossing after it came under daily rocket and mortar attacks, along with other border crossings.

Closing it was 'also a very clear signal' to Hamas. 'Hamas itself sits and fires at the crossings. If it fires at the crossings, it will pay the price. It will have to explain to the people why no food is entering Gaza that day,' said Dror.

EU urges restraint

European Commissioner for External Affairs Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in Jerusalem she was 'concerned' over the tougher sanctions, warned against 'collective punishment', and urged Israel to 'show restraint', and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said closing the crossing enhanced the 'vulnerability' of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants, many of whom rely on food hand-outs.

Riyad Malki, the spokesman for the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas-appointed 'caretaker' government in the West Bank, called the sanctions 'unacceptable', but denied Abbas was suspending his talks with Israel over them.

But Israel's Highest Court of Justice late Sunday rejected a petition by human rights groups against the sanctions. It did order the Israeli state to submit an argument as to why the sanctions should not be prevented within five days.

An Israeli soldier and three Palestinians, among them two Hamas militants and a civilian, were killed in gun battles in the south and north of the Strip, as Israeli troops penetrated the areas to act against the rocket launchers.

A WFP spokeswoman in Jerusalem, Kirstie Campbell, acknowledged both Kerem Shalom and Sufa 'have been under sustained mortar and rocket attacks from Palestinian militants'.

But she warned that the remaining crossing of Kerem Shalom lacked the capacity to meet Gaza's daily needs of basic foods. While Sufa had the capacity to let through about 100 trucks a day, Kerem Shalom had about half that, she said.

She said some 70 percent of Gaza's non-refugee population, to which WFP is tending, lived on less than $1.2 per person per day, up from 55 percent in June, when Israel suspended all non-essential commerce with Gaza after Hamas' violent take-over of the Strip.

She said three-quarters of all Gazans now relied on monthly food parcels handed out by the WFP and other bodies.