CNN.com has an article about the war in Gaza:
Israel is in "all-out war" with Hamas, the nation's defense minister said Monday, as Israeli jets continued to hammer targets in Gaza and the Palestinian death toll reportedly topped 300. "We have stretched out our hand in peace many times to the Palestinian people. We have nothing against the people of Gaza," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. "But this is an all-out war against Hamas and its branches." Barak's remarks to parliament came as Israeli warplanes carried out a third day of strikes against the Palestinian militant group that rules Gaza. The Palestinian death toll from the campaign has topped three hundred, most of them Hamas militants, Palestinian medical sources said Monday. The attacks also have wounded about 650 people, sources said.
Iyad Nasr, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the streets of Gaza were largely empty while airstrikes continued Monday morning. "Very little number of cars are going out," he said. "People who need to secure some basic food supplies are all to go out, or people looking for a family member who is missing or going to a hospital." A UN spokeswoman in Gaza City described the scene as chaotic and said Palestinians were "running in all directions" and were fighting among themselves.
Israel says the goal of the bombardment is to stop an ongoing stream of rockets being fired from Gaza into southern Israel. More than forty rockets and mortar shells were fired into Israel on Monday despite the raids, according to Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld. More than 150 rockets have been launched into Israeli territory since the campaign began, Israel Defense Forces said. One of the strikes killed an Israeli at a construction site in Ashkelon, six miles (ten kilometers) north of Gaza, and wounded eight others, a hospital spokeswoman said. Another Israeli was killed during an attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, according to Israeli police and hospital spokespersons. They were the second and third Israeli fatalities since the airstrikes began Saturday. Two other people were wounded in Nahal Oz, one seriously, and three people were wounded by rocket attacks in Ashdod, one seriously and one critically.
The White House on Monday called on Hamas to halt its ongoing rocket fire on Israel so calm can be restored in Gaza. "In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable cease-fire," said a statement from White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Israel has struck more than 300 Hamas targets since Saturday, its military said. The Israeli air force carried out at least twenty airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, Israeli military sources said. Hamas security sources said the targets included the homes of two commanders of Hamas' military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in the Jabalya refugee camp just north of Gaza City. Neither commander was among the seven people killed in those strikes, the sources said.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on a report by Dr. Mu'awiya Hassanein that a strike near a mosque in Jabalya killed five children in a nearby home. The situation triggered protests in Iran, Greece, Britain and Lebanon, and the Iranian government declared a day of mourning for Palestinians in Gaza.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Hamas for the rocket attacks, but also had strong words for Israel. "While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, I have also condemned the excessive use of force by Israel in Gaza. The suffering caused to civilian populations as a result of the large-scale violence and destruction that have taken place over the past few days has saddened me profoundly," he said in a prepared statement. The UN Security Council has called for both sides to immediately end the violence, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that the campaign could last "for some time," and his Cabinet voted to call up 7,000 reservists. So far, about 2,000 reservists have been activated, according to the government.
Hamas pledges it will defend its land and people from what it calls continued Israeli aggression. Each side blames the other for violating an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. The truce formally expired on 19 December, but it had been weakening for months.
There was no indication of a ground operation inside the territory, but Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Sunday that Israel has not ruled out a push into Gaza. Livni defended the airstrikes, saying the raids have been aimed at "only military targets and places in which we know Hamas members are. Unfortunately, in this kind of attack, there are some civilian casualties," she said. "But Israel took all the necessary actions to warn the civilians before the attacks to leave the places they know that Hamas stays."
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian parliament member, flatly blamed the violence on the Israeli "occupation" of the Palestinian territories and dismissed Israeli claims that it is targeting only Hamas. "This is not a war on Hamas; it is a war on the Palestinian people," he said. "The Israeli politicians are using this bloodbath, which is the worst since 1967, for their election campaigns. This is insane."
Both Livni and Barak will be vying in February for the prime minister's post against Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Barak and Netanyahu have previously held the post.
Israel allowed more than fifty trucks carrying relief aid into Gaza on Monday, in addition to forty on Sunday, Israeli military sources said. The UN is expecting one hundred trucks Monday, but a UN official said it will not be enough to alleviate the worsening humanitarian situation.
Nasr, the Red Cross spokesman, said Israeli sanctions had left Gaza's hospitals "almost incapable of functioning" even before the weekend's attacks, and those facilities are now "bleeding every resource" available. "These supplies will increase by a little bit the quality of the services available to the victims, but it's far from meeting the needs of such medical facilities," Nasr said.
In the West Bank, Saeb Erakat, adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, urged Israeli and Hamas leaders to put another cease-fire in place. The power base of Abbas' Fatah party is in the West Bank. The party is locked in a power struggle with Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and wrested Gaza from Fatah in violent clashes last year. Abbas, a US ally, wields little influence in Gaza.
Rico says Israel should have bulldozed Gaza into the sea in 1948, in 1956, in 1967, and in 1973, but this time they may actually do it... In a related story:
Iran was trying to ship two thousand tons of food and water to Gaza, according to an Iranian media report. A ship carrying the supplies and members of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad left Monday for Egypt, which has not yet issued a permit for the vessel, according to Mojtaba Rahmandoost, director of the Society for the Defense of Palestine.
Rico says he wonders what else the Iranians put aboard...
No comments:
Post a Comment