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GAZA CITY: Israeli troops battled Hamas fighters in major cities of
overcrowded Gaza on Tuesday as Israel spurned appeals to halt a war
on the Islamists that has killed at least 580 Palestinians.
Israeli tanks firing cannons and backed by
helicopter gunships rolled into the southern city of Khan Yunis in
the pre-dawn hours, to be met by return fire from Hamas and other
militant groups, witnesses said.
The incursion came as Israeli infantry and Hamas
gunmen exchanged fire inside Gaza City and at the edges of Deir
al-Balah and al-Bureij in the center of the territory, witnesses and
medics said.
Israeli strikes hit two separate schools run by
the United Nations in the Gaza Strip also on Tuesday, killing at
least five Palestinians, medics and UN officials said.
Despite the relentless air, ground and naval
assault on their stronghold launched to stop rockets, defiant Hamas
continued to fire into Israel.
One projectile slammed 45 kilometers, the
deepest yet inside the Jewish state, lightly wounding a baby, the
Army said. Three others landed elsewhere without causing injuries.
Calls for truce
Protests against one of Israel’s deadliest
ever offensives on Gaza spiraled around the globe and French
President Nicolas Sarkozy led new calls for a truce as he held talks
with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
“We, Europe, want a ceasefire as soon as
possible,” Sarkozy said Monday. “Time is working against peace.
The weapons must be silenced and there must be a temporary
humanitarian truce.”
But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed
that the campaign would continue until Israel completely wiped out
Hamas’s ability to fire rockets into Israel.
“The results of the operation must be . . .
that Hamas must not only stop firing but must no longer be able to
fire,” he was quoted as saying.
“We cannot accept a compromise that will allow
Hamas to fire in two months against Israeli towns.”
Mounting death toll
Israel unleashed its “Operation Cast Lead”
on Hamas on December 27 with a massive air bombardment of Gaza, and
poured in thousands of ground troops a week later.
Since then, at least 580 Palestinians have been
killed, nearly 100 of them children, and more than 2,700 wounded,
according to Gaza medics.
The Army also said Tuesday that an Israeli
paratroop officer was killed overnight in northern Gaza, indicating
he may have been killed by friendly fire.
“The details of the event are still being
investigated; however it is suspected that a tank shell was
mistakenly fired at the force,” the Army said in a statement.
The death brings to five the number of Israeli
soldiers killed since the Army poured ground troops into the Hamas
stronghold on Saturday. Three of the soldiers died as a result of
“friendly fire” in clashes in Gaza.
The International Committee of the Red Cross
said people were dying because ambulances could not reach them amid
the fighting.
Brokering peace
Sarkozy, in Jerusalem after meeting Palestinian
President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah, called the Hamas rocket attacks
“irresponsible and unforgivable,” sparking the Islamists’
retort that he was “totally biased” toward Israel.
Olmert and Sarkozy agreed the latter would
continue to push for a deal involving Egypt.
Cairo brokered a six-month truce that ended on
December 19, which Hamas refused to renew and Sarkozy spoke after
meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and as a senior Hamas
delegation was due to arrive in Egypt for talks on ending the
violence.
US support
Israel’s main ally the United States continued
to lend strong support to the operation, with US President George W.
Bush saying any truce must ensure an end to rocket fire.
“I understand Israel’s desire to protect
itself and that the situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by
Hamas,” he said.
The fighting in one of the world’s most
densely populated places where minors make up a large chunk of the
1.5-million population has claimed dozens of civilian lives.
In the latest such incident, medics said a
couple and their five children were killed by a Navy shell, while
three children were killed by a shell in the Gaza City suburbs and
two were killed in Shati.
Israeli officials have insisted they are doing
all to prevent civilian casualties and have blamed Hamas for
operating from civilian centers.
Gaza militants have continued to fire rockets
into Israel despite the massive offensive, with three civilians and
one soldier killed by the projectiles since December 27.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since seizing the
densely populated coastal enclave in June 2007 from forces loyal to
Abbas, has remained defiant.
“Victory is coming,” its senior leader in
Gaza, Mahmud Zahar, said in a television broadcast.
Israel faces intense international pressure to
ease the suffering of the aid-dependent 1.5-million Gaza population,
which has no power or water supplies and finding food is a daily
struggle.
The UN Security Council was to meet again on
Tuesday to weigh an Arab call for an immediate ceasefire and for
protection of Palestinian civilians, diplomats said.
-- AFP
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