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Fresh air strikes on Gaza
07/07/2006 08:32 - (SA)
Gaza City - Israeli forces renewed air strikes at armed Palestinians in northern Gaza on Friday morning after a bloody day of clashes in which militants with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades faced Israeli tanks and attack helicopters.
Twenty-two Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in by far the biggest battle since Israel withdrew from Gaza last summer.
With two goals - winning freedom for a soldier captured by militants and halting rocket fire at Israeli towns and a city - Israeli tanks and troops invaded two towns not far from the border, taking control of a strip across the narrow seaside territory to put an Israeli city out of rocket range.
Air strikes
After sunrise on Friday, Israel renewed its assault in northern Gaza with two air strikes, killing one Hamas militant and wounding three, Hamas hospital officials said.
The military said aircraft fired at four armed Palestinians where there were exchanges of fire earlier. Two were wounded in the second air strike, hospital officials said.
Palestinians responded to the new offensive with a general call to arms alongside appeals for international intervention.
No word on captured soldier
There was still no word of the fate of corporal Gilad Shalit, captured on June 25 by Hamas-affiliated gunmen who tunnelled into Israel and attacked a border crossing post, killing two soldiers.
Israeli leaders singled out Hamas as its chief enemy, and the Palestinian prime minister, a Hamas leader, charged Israel was trying to bring down his government.
Israel insisted it was not planning to reoccupy Gaza, but military commanders said they had orders to win release of the soldier and prevent militants from firing rockets, even if that meant repeated short-term incursions.
Casualties
Palestinians fired seven rockets on Thursday and early on Friday. One caused some damage in the town of Sderot, just outside Gaza. No one was hurt.
Clashes on Thursday took the highest death toll among Palestinians since well before Israel's unilateral Gaza withdrawal last summer. Until last week, when Israel sent forces into southern Gaza in response to the cross-border attack, Israel had confined its attacks against militants to air strikes and artillery barrages.
Dozens of Palestinian casualties, most of them militants but with many women and children among the wounded, crowded the emergency rooms and corridors of Gaza hospitals, already suffering from shortages of medical supplies because of a closure Israel clamped on the territory after the capture of the soldier.
- AP
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