Death toll in Gaza rises to 19 after new Israeli raid on Gaza City

[ProgressiveMuslim]

Date: 15 / 01 / 2008 Time: 10:01


Victim of Tuesday's massacre
(Ma'anImages)
Gaza – Ma'an – The death toll in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday has risen to 19 after two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli raid into northern Gaza City on Tuesday evening.

Just hours after the Israeli withdrawal from the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, eyewitnesses said an Israeli rocket attack near the agricultural school left two people dead and several others injured.

Mu'awiyah Hassanein, the head of ambulance and emergency services in the Palestinian Health Ministry, said the injured were transferred to Beit Hanoun Hospital for treatment.

Earlier in the day Israeli tank fire killed 17 Palestinians, including five civilians and the son of senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar, in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City within four hours on Tuesday, witnesses and medics said. 13 of the dead are thought to be members of Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades.

An estimated 50 Palestinians were injured.


http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=27206

[Tom Joad]

1. This is very troubling. Nothing good will come of this.

[Hydra]

2. And they were supposedly hunting Hamas, right?

that's as thin as us killing civs in Iraq, hunting for "Al-Qaeda in Iraq"

[bemildred]

3. Hamas' Meshal: IDF raids hurt chance of Shalit deal and truce

Sure must be great being a "bargaining chip".

Hamas' exiled leader said Wednesday that Israel Defense Forces raids on Gaza would hurt chances of the Palestinian militant group releasing Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who the group has been holding captive since 2006.

Khaled Meshal told reporters that recent IDF operations in the coastal strip also made Hamas less likely to negotiate any truce with Israel.

Speaking to Israeli leaders, Meshal said: "What you are doing will deny you of any plan you could be betting on: No exchange for Gilad Shalit and no truce." The militant leader's comments at a news conference in Damascus, where he lives, came as IDF troops continued a second day of raids in Gaza, which has been under Hamas' control since the group's forces ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement from the strip in June.

Israel Air Force aircrafts fired repeatedly at Palestinian rocket squads Wednesday in northern Gaza, killing five people, including three civilians, as rockets and mortars sailed across the border into Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945292.html

[bemildred]

4. Hamas: Abbas calls Zahar over son's death, breaking boycott of group

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar on Wednesday to commiserate on the killing of the latter's son by Israel Defense Forces troops, Hamas said, the first such contact since a Palestinian factional schism last year.

Hamas routed Abbas's secular Fatah to take over the Gaza Strip in June, prompting the Palestinian president to shun the Islamist group and step up Western-sponsored peace efforts with Israel. Hamas refuses to give up fighting the Jewish state.

Hamas said Abbas suspended his boycott by phoning Zahar, a senior Hamas official whose son, a gunman, was among 19 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Tuesday. "In the first call since June, President Mahmoud telephoned Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar ... and paid his condolences at the killing of Zahar's son," said Taher al-Nono, spokesman for the Hamas administration in Gaza.

"The telephone conversation was very friendly and the two leaders spoke at length about the current political situation and they both stressed the unity of the Palestinian people regardless of the differences."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945430.html

[azurnoir]

5. But I thought George and Ehud

told Mahoud that is couldn't talk to Hamas "kids".

Seriously it would seem that some sort of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah would be a step towards peace, however as the last line of the article states

Israeli officials have said rapprochement between Abbas and Hamas could scupper peace talks.

[bemildred]

6. Well, I guess we just "scuppered" the "peace talks" then.

Big deal.