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.

South Korean warehouse fire kills 40

SEOUL, South Korea - Fire tore through a refrigeration warehouse under construction in an industrial district south of the capital today, killing 40 people and sending toxic fumes into the air, officials said.

Kim Jung-geun, a local fire official, said no more bodies were expected to be found at the site of the blaze in Icheon about 50 miles south of Seoul.

He said the exact cause of the morning fire was not known, but that workers were injecting urethane foam into basement walls when the fire started.

Kim said explosions heard around the time of the fire were caused by the blaze itself. He also said only one body had been positively identified so far, because the corpses were so badly burned.

Ha Jae-ho, a fire investigator, told YTN that firefighters and rescue officials were searching the wreckage carefully because they feared the building might collapse.

Cable news channel YTN showed black-clad firefighters battling thick black, brown and white smoke, some of it spewing from underground.

An official at Korea 2000, a logistics company that owns the facility, said the building was under construction and was intended for refrigeration purposes.

The official said workers were applying the final touches when the fire broke out. The official requested anonymity, saying company rules prohibit employees from speaking to the media.

Icheon, a crossroads for South Korea's largest highways, is home to Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-largest manufacture of computer memory chips.

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.

3 die, gunman killed in Colorado shootings

A gunman and three victims were killed and five others were wounded Sunday in two apparently unprovoked shootings that unfolded about 12 hours and 70 miles apart at a missionary training center and a church in Colorado, law enforcement authorities reported.

One police official said there was reason to believe the shootings were related, but he did not elaborate. In any case, two attacks at Christian institutions in such proximity on a single day seemed extraordinary, and they produced shock and dismay among church members, residents and public officials.

"When innocent people are killed in a religious facility or place of worship, we must voice a collective sense of outrage," Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said in a statement.

The shootings - at a missionary training center near Denver and at an evangelical megachurch in Colorado Springs - turned a quiet Sunday of fellowship into a day of high drama and gunfire, with bystanders running for cover, swarms of police officers rushing to the scenes, followed by lockdowns, evacuations and a manhunt for the gunman who got away after the first attack.

That shooting occurred about 12:30 a.m. in Arvada, 15 miles west of Denver, at a dormitory of Youth With a Mission, an interdenominational Christian organization with hundreds of centers around the country that train young people for short-term missionary service around the world.

Witnesses said the gunman - in his 20s and wearing a dark jacket and a dark skullcap - spoke to several staff members, insisting he was not homeless and asking to spend the night. After a 30-minute discussion grew heated, he was turned away. When a staff member asked for help from others to usher him out, he drew a handgun, shot a woman and a man to death and wounded two other staff members.

He fled on foot into the snowy night, witnesses said. As ambulances rushed the wounded away, heavily armed police teams with dogs searched the snow-covered ground of surrounding neighborhoods. But no trace of the suspect was found in the area.

Slightly more than 12 hours later in Colorado Springs, about an hour and a half south of Arvada by car, a gunman also clad in dark clothing invaded the grounds of the New Life Church, a 14,000-member institution founded by the Rev. Ted Haggard, who resigned in disgrace last year after acknowledging a three-year sexual relationship with a male prostitute.

Wearing combat boots and carrying an assault rifle and at least one pistol, the gunman, apparently without provocation, opened fire in a parking lot and shot four people, one of them fatally, as bystanders dashed for cover. There were about 7,000 worshipers inside the church when the shooting erupted, a church official said.

The Colorado Springs chief of police, Richard Myers, said that after the parking-lot shootings, the assailant ran into the 10,000-seat church, and was confronted by an armed church security guard, who shot and killed him. Neither the gunman nor the victims in Colorado Springs were immediately identified by the authorities.

At a news conference on Sunday night, Myers praised the security guard, whom he did not name, and said his actions had undoubtedly saved lives. Myers said several "suspicious devices" were found near the gunman's body. The church and other buildings on the campus-like grounds were evacuated and searched. It was unclear later if additional suspicious devices were found.

The pastor of the New Life Church, the Rev. Brady Boyd, said he had watched the horror unfold from his second-floor office. "My heart is broken today for the people who lost their lives," he said.

Asked about the possibility that the shootings had been related, Myers said there was no evidence of such a connection. But the Arvada police chief, Don Wick, said he had reason to believe that the two shootings were linked, though he declined to say why.

Peter Warren, director of the training center in Arvada, said a Christmas banquet had been held at the mission building Saturday night and that the doors had been locked about midnight. A half an hour after the closing, the man appeared and asked for an accommodation.

Among those who spoke to him, Warren said, was Tiffany Johnson, 26, of Minnesota, the director of hospitality for the training site. Johnson was killed, as was Philip Crouse, 24, of Alaska. Two men were wounded - Charlie Blanch, 22, and Dan Griebenow, 24. One was in critical condition and the other in stable condition after being hospitalized.