Israel pounds Gaza amid int’l peace bid
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 06:21:00 01/06/2009
Filed Under: Gaza conflict, Unrest and Conflicts and War
GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP—AT least seven children and six other civilians were killed on Monday as Israeli forces stepped up its bruising offensive against Palestinian militants in the face of French-led diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire.
As houses, mosques and tunnels on the Gaza Strip came under heavy shelling from the air, land and sea, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the offensive would continue until Israel achieved its objective—“peace and tranquility” for residents of southern Israel who continued to be bombarded by rocket and mortar fire from Hamas militants.
A stream of diplomats and world leaders hoping to end the violence headed for the region to meet with Israeli leaders as world outrage mounted over rising Palestinian casualties in the 10-day-old conflict.
Gaza health officials reported 524 dead and nearly 2,000 wounded since Israel embarked upon its military campaign against Gaza’s Islamic Hamas rulers on Dec. 27. At least 200 civilians were among the dead.
Israeli forces seized sparsely populated areas in northern Gaza on Sunday. By Monday morning, they were dug in on the edges of Gaza City.
A further push into the heart of the city would mean deadly urban warfare, replete with house-to-house fighting, sniper fire and booby traps, in crowded streets and alleyways familiar to Hamas’ 20,000 fighters.
13 civilians dead
Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, a Gaza health official, said a total of 13 civilians were killed in the various attacks across the Gaza Strip on Monday morning.
Hassanain reported four young siblings were killed in a missile strike on a house east of Gaza City, while three other children died in a naval shelling of a Gaza City beach camp.
He said three adult civilians died when a missile struck near a house of mourning in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Three other adult civilians died in attacks elsewhere.
Israeli troops took over three six-floor buildings on the outskirts of Gaza City, taking up rooftop positions after locking residents in rooms and taking away their cell phones, a neighbor said, quoting a relative in one of the buildings before his phone was taken away.
“The (Israeli) Army is there, firing in all directions,” said Mohammed Salmai, a 29-year-old truck driver. “All we can do is take clothes to each other to keep ourselves warm and pray to God that if we die, someone will find our bodies under the rubble.”
Civilian casualties have spiked since Israel launched a ground offensive on Saturday, following a week of punishing air strikes. Of about 80 Palestinians killed during the ground operation, at least 70 were civilians, Hassanain said.
Black, white smoke
Black smoke from tank shells and windswept dust billowed in the air over Gaza City, while white smoke from mortar shells rose in plumes above a main road leading to northern Gaza that the Israeli military seized on Sunday, cutting off Gaza’s north from its south.
Explosions could be heard in Gaza City as Israeli aircraft attacked buildings.
The streets of Gaza City, home to 400,000 people, were almost empty. Two children crossing a street near a Hamas security compound didn’t look right and left for cars, but gazed up at the sky, apparently looking for attack aircraft. The only vehicles on the road were fire engines, ambulances and press cars.
Unmanned Israeli planes and Apache helicopters circled overhead.
“Hamas has sustained a very harsh blow,” Barak told parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee. “But we still haven’t reached our objectives, so the offensive continues.”
Israeli demands
Israel has three main demands—an end to Palestinian attacks, international supervision of any truce and a halt to Hamas rearming.
“If we withdraw today, without reaching some kind of comprehensive agreement, we haven’t done anything,” Israeli Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio. “The military has to carry on with its work.”
Four Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets and mortars fired into Israel since the offensive began. An Israeli soldier was also killed in fighting on Sunday, while 48 other soldiers were wounded after Israel launched its ground invasion.
Hamas is demanding a cessation of Israeli attacks and the opening of vital Gaza-Israel cargo crossings, Gaza’s main lifeline.
Hamas security said Israeli aircraft struck two mosques in central and northern Gaza, while ground troops battled with militants armed with mortar shells, grenades and antitank missiles in the area between Gaza City, Gaza’s largest urban area, and Jebaliya to the north.
Ground clashes
The ground clashes took place in open areas that militants use to launch rockets and mortars at nearby Israeli communities, but Israeli troops did not advance into urban areas where casualties are liable to swell.
The Israeli military said aircraft carried out 30 sorties overnight, striking a mosque in Jebaliya that contained a large store of weapons, and an underground arms bunker in the Gaza City area that touched off secondary explosions and collapsed underground smuggling tunnels.
Israeli aircraft also hit weapons smuggling tunnels in southern Gaza, near the Egyptian border. Warplanes went after the houses of Hamas members where weapons were stored, the Israeli military said. A rocket launcher and suspected anti-aircraft missile launcher were also targeted.
The violence has deepened the suffering in impoverished Gaza, home to 1.4 million people. The military on Monday said that 80 truckloads of humanitarian aid and critical fuel supplies would be let in.
Militants, defying the attacks, fired more than a dozen rockets at Israel early Monday, police said. No injuries were reported, but the rockets continued to fire deep inside Israel, some 32 kilometers (20 miles) from the Gaza border.
One reason Israel launched the Gaza campaign was because militants have acquired weapons able to reach closer to Israel’s Tel Aviv heartland.
Israel’s ground operation is the second phase in an offensive that began as a weeklong aerial onslaught aimed at halting Hamas rocket fire that now threatens major cities and one-eighth of Israel’s population of 7 million people.
International outcry
The spiraling civilian casualties have fueled an intensifying international outcry.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who unsuccessfully proposed a two-day truce before the land invasion began, was due to meet with Israei Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Paelstinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who lost control of Gaza to Hamas in June 2007.
While blaming Hamas for causing Palestinian suffering with rocket fire that led to the Israeli offensive, Sarkozy has condemned Israel’s use of ground troops, reflecting general world opinion.
Sarkozy and other diplomats making their way to the region are expected to press hard for a ceasefire.
Humanitarian aid
A delegation from the 27-nation European Union included EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana who was due to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
The Czech Republic, which took over the EU presidency on Thursday, urged Israel to allow humanitarian relief aid into Gaza.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday spoke on the phone with Olmert and advocated a quick ceasefire in Gaza. Merkel also called for an end to the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip.
Turkey and Egypt, which have both been involved intimately in Mideast peacemaking, have denounced the ground offensive.
Associated Press
|
