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Israeli strikes kill 18 in Gaza
01/03/2008 11:08 - (SA)
Gaza City - A major Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip on Saturday killed at least 18 Palestinians, including at least seven civilians, Doctor Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza emergency services, said.
The latest operation began before dawn when Israeli tanks supported by helicopters targeted the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, launching at least 10 missile strikes.
At least 40 people were also wounded in the latest deadly assault on the Hamas-ruled territory after violence sharply escalated on Wednesday.
Demonstrators poured into the streets on Friday throughout the impoverished and isolated territory in response to Hamas calls to denounce the air strikes.
"They've killed my right to childhood," read a sign held by a child, clad in a red-stained white funeral shroud, who attended a large rally in Jabaliya.
'Facing war'
A senior Hamas leader told worshippers at a Gaza City mosque that the coastal strip which the Islamists have ruled for more than eight months was facing war.
"Gaza today faces a real war, a crazy war led by the enemy against our people," said Ismail Haniya, the premier in a Hamas-led government which Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas fired after Hamas seized control of Gaza.
Haniya lashed out at the US administration, which he claimed backs the Israeli attacks by portraying them as "self-defence." He also accused the Arab world of "encouraging the Israeli aggression" through its silence.
Abbas meanwhile expressed concern at what he called the "dangers of an Israeli escalation" in the Gaza Strip, his office said in a statement received by AFP.
He urged Israel to cease its attacks on the territory and also called on Palestinian militants to stop rocket attacks on Israel.
"It is in the interest of the Palestinian people not to give Israel any pretext to continue its aggression," Abbas said.
The 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) also condemned the Israeli raids and urged the United Nations to rein in the Jewish state.
But Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai warned his country "will not shy away from any action" to halt the near-daily rocket fire from Gaza.
"By intensifying the rocket fire and extending their reach they are bringing onto themselves a worse catastrophe as we will use all means to defend ourselves," Vilnai told army radio.
Possibility of widescale ground operation
Defence Minister Ehud Barak said earlier Israel was considering the possibility of launching a widescale ground operation in Gaza.
Israel says its strikes target rocket-launching sites. Gaza militants have fired more 125 rockets at Israel since Wednesday, according to the Israeli army.
The attacks from Gaza injured a handful of people and killed a civilian on Wednesday, the first Israeli since May to die from the near-daily rocket fire.
The violence has overshadowed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process which was revived at a US-hosted conference in late November but has made little progress since.
The latest escalation around Gaza flared early on Wednesday when an Israeli strike killed five Hamas militants in the southern town of Khan Yunis. In retaliation, the Islamists launched a barrage of rockets into southern Israel.
Several of the rockets hit the coastal city of Ashkelon, raising fears inside Israel that Gaza militants are receiving longer-range projectiles and fuelling calls for a ground operation.
A five-month incursion in 2006 - conducted after Gaza militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid - killed several hundred Palestinians but failed to stop the rocket fire.
The chief of Israel's left-wing Meretz party, Yossi Beilin, said Hamas had offered a truce around Gaza over the past two weeks but the overtures had been rejected by the Israeli leadership, which brands the movement a terror outfit.
The latest deaths brought to 6 206 the total number of people killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence since 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.
- AFP
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