Israeli strikes kill 54 in Gaza
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - March 1, 2008 Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded in the
clashes, the military said.
The violence took a heavy toll on Gaza civilians. Moderate
Palestinian leaders called the killings a "genocide" and
threatened to call off peace talks.
"The response to these rockets can't be that harsh and
heinous," said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "It is
nowadays described as a holocaust."
The spasm of violence came days before Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice was to arrive in the region to nudge Israel and
Palestinians closer to a peace accord. But the rising tensions
threatened to mar her visit.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Gordon
Johndroe expressed regret for loss of civilian life on both sides
but put most of the blame on the Palestinians.
"There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks
that target civilians and action in self-defense," he said in a
statement.
The U.N. Security Council met Saturday night behind closed doors
in emergency session at the request of the Palestinians and their
Arab supporters.
Early Sunday, Israeli aircraft destroyed the office building in
Gaza City used by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, witnesses
said. Five people were lightly wounded in the raid.
At least two dozen Palestinian civilians, including a baby, were
among those killed Saturday, and militants said 25 fighters died.
Health officials said about 200 people were wounded, 14 of them
critically.
The overall death toll was the highest in a single day since the
current round of violence erupted in September 2000. The highest
previous death toll was 38 on March 8, 2002.
The intense fighting pushed the Palestinian death toll to more
than 80 since fighting flared Wednesday. About half of those were
civilians.
While expressing regret for civilian casualties, Israeli Defense
Minister Ehud Barak blamed "Hamas and those firing rockets at
Israel," his office said in a statement, pledging to continue the
offensive to protect Israeli towns and cities.
On Friday, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai renewed
a threat to invade Gaza to crush militant rocket squads that attack
southern Israel daily.
Palestinian fighters kept up a steady stream of rocket and
mortar attacks on Israeli targets, firing around 50 on Saturday
alone in defiance of the Israeli assault. Six Israelis were injured
by rockets that reached as far as Ashkelon, a coastal city 11 miles
north of Gaza.
The Israeli military said one of its airstrikes on northern Gaza
targeted a parked truck loaded with 160 rockets.
On Thursday, militants raised the stakes by firing Iranian-made
rockets into Ashkelon, striking closer to Israel's heartland than
ever before and putting more Israelis at risk. Palestinian rocket
fire earlier in the week also killed an Israeli man.
Shortly before midnight Friday in the northern town of Beit
Hanoun, a 13-month-old girl was killed by shrapnel. Hamas blamed
Israel, but residents said a militant rocket fell short and landed
near the baby's house. The day's violence snowballed from that
point on.
Before dawn Saturday, the battleground shifted to the town of
Jebaliya and its nearby refugee camp, a center of militant activity
in northern Gaza.
Soldiers backed by tanks and aircraft conducted house-to-house
searches and took up positions on rooftops as they clashed with
militants detonating land mines and firing heavy machine guns,
assault rifles and mortar rounds.
A wounded man and boy lay in a gutter near a dead man. Ambulance
workers took away the dead man as a youth appealed to paramedics to
treat the wounded.
"Take them, they are still alive," he pleaded. Another man
urged the wounded to "bear witness," or proclaim their Muslim
faith before they die. The two began reciting a Muslim prayer near
a boy whose lower body was ripped by shrapnel.
Tareq Dardouna, a Jebaliya resident, said a relative was killed
outside his home in the crossfire that began at 3 a.m.
"His body is still on the ground," Dardouna said in a
telephone interview from his home, where he was tending to four
wounded people amid screaming children. "Ambulances tried to come,
but they came under fire. ... We are in a real war."
Two sisters and another civilian were killed by tank shells that
struck two houses in separate attacks in Jebaliya, Palestinian
officials said.
At one of the damaged houses, paramedics rushed an unmoving
woman lying on a stretcher, her face covered with a cloth, out of a
room clouded with dust.
By evening, more than 40 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers
had been killed in the Jebaliya fighting.
All but the most critically injured were sent home from Shifa
Hospital, Gaza's largest. Beds crammed hospital corridors, and the
intensive care unit was overflowing, a doctor at the hospital said.
The doctors union urged its members to cancel leaves and appealed
for blood donations.
The U.N. shuttered 37 schools it runs in northern Gaza because
of the fighting, affecting some 40,000 students said Christopher
Gunness, a U.N. official. A three-day strike was declared in Gaza,
and publicly run schools and universities were closed.
Mosques across northern Gaza and Hamas-affiliated radio appealed
to civilians to stay home. Hamas closed off roads to evacuate
security compounds and to keep residents away from potential
airstrike targets. They also turned off street lights, apparently
so militants wouldn't be seen from the air.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said Palestinian
leaders including Abbas recommended suspending peace talks at a
meeting Saturday in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
"I think it will be suspended," Qureia said. "What is
happening in Gaza is a massacre of civilians, women and children, a
collective killing, genocide," Qureia added. "We can't bear what
the Israelis are doing, and what the Israelis are doing doesn't led
the peace process any credibility."
Hamas remained defiant and vowed to retaliate.
In Syria, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal described Israeli
attacks against civilians in Gaza as "the real Holocaust."
"If (Israeli officials) decided stupidly to invade Gaza, we
will fight them with God's help," Mashaal told reporters from his
base in Damascus. "We will fight them like lions."
Mashaal blamed the rival Fatah, headed by Abbas, for helping
along Israel's attacks.
"I accuse the president of the Palestinian Authority of
providing coverage of this holocaust in Gaza," Mashaal said. Hamas
has said Abbas' condemnation of rocket fire has given a pretext to
Israel's assault on Gaza.
Israeli officials met Saturday to discuss the Gaza violence and
its implications for peacemaking. Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye
Mekel said talks didn't preclude fighting. Talks are "based on the
understanding that when advancing the peace process with pragmatic
(Palestinian) sources, Israel will continue to fight terror that
hurts its people," he said.
Vice Premier Haim Ramon told Channel 2 TV that Israel should
fight in Gaza, but not reoccupy it. Israel pulled its troops and
settlers out of the tiny seaside territory in late 2005, but
militants proceeded to fire rockets from the abandoned territory at
Israeli communities.
Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, took control of
Gaza by force from the rival Fatah in June.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Israel was
"compelled to continue to take these defensive measures" to
protect more than 200,000 Israelis living under the threat of
Palestinian rocket barrages.
Militants "hide behind their own civilians, using them as human
shields, while actively targeting Israeli population centers,"
Baker said. "They bear the responsibility for the results."
Israeli military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich called
Saturday's action a "pinpoint operation" provoked by the rocket
attack on Ashkelon earlier in the week. She blamed the high
civilian toll on Hamas' practice of using homes to store and
produce projectiles.
"We are not targeting homes and we have no intentions of
targeting uninvolved civilians," she said. "We will target
launchers and Hamas militants, and bunkers."
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which had been in a deep freeze
for seven years, resumed in November at a U.S.-sponsored
conference. At the gathering, the two sides pledged to try to reach
an accord by the end of this year. In recent weeks, negotiators
have met almost daily.
But even when violence is at a lower level, Abbas' efforts are
compromised by the fact that he only rules the West Bank, while
Gaza is controlled by Hamas. And Israel's fragile government would
be hard pressed to make concessions to the Palestinians while Gaza
militants pummel southern Israel.