09 April 2011

GAZA: Israeli air strikes and shelling killed nine Palestinians, including three civilians, in Gaza Friday, with no end in sight to an Israeli operation against Hamas after a rocket attack on an Israeli school bus.

Israel has said it will teach Hamas a lesson for using an anti-tank missile to attack the school bus just across the border Thursday. A teenager and a driver were injured in the attack, for which Hamas claimed responsibility.

At sundown, Israeli drones were still flying over the enclave and ambulances were racing through Gaza City to the main hospital.

Reuters television footage showed a bloody scene near a cemetery with dismembered bodies and a severed head.

Israeli air strikes during the day killed three Hamas fighters and three Palestinian civilians, on the second day of the upsurge in the conflict.

Hospital sources said a Hamas commander died of severe wounds, another man was killed by shelling and an 11-year-old was fatally hit.

At least 32 Palestinians have been killed since the latest spasm of violence erupted on March 20, with 14 killed in the past two days by Israeli action.

A later Israeli strike near the coast killed a third fighter and wounded another, Gaza medical sources said.

Hamas said a local commander had also been badly injured, and it responded by firing six rockets at Israel.

An elderly Palestinian and two women died earlier when their house in Khan Younis was hit and three other women were wounded, according to hospital sources.

In the wake of the strikes, the self-declared truce called by Hamas appeared meaningless, with both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claiming mortar and rocket attacks on Israel Friday.

“Our holy warriors are ready to react to the Zionist aggression and respond to any foolish acts committed by the occupation with everything they have,” said a statement from Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

A statement on the group’s website also said the “resistance” had fired

several Grad rockets at Ashkelon and that smoke was rising from the Israeli city.

At least 15 rockets had been fired into Israel since dawn, causing damage but no injuries, said a police spokesman.

“We are in the middle of an event,” Gen. Tal Russo, head of Israeli forces southern command, told reporters. “We are considering all actions, and we are in the midst of it.” Hamas had been hit hard, he said, but it was not over yet.

Two years of low-level skirmishing on the border escalated suddenly last month when Hamas, which rules Gaza, fired a barrage of rockets at Israel, triggering a surge of fighting in which 18 Palestinians were killed.

Political analysts in Gaza said Hamas wanted to bolster its claim to leadership of the divided Palestinian national movement and divert attention from popular demands – fueled by the “Arab Spring” – for an end to the split with its Fatah rivals.

That spurt of violence subsided but fighting flared again Thursday when Hamas gunmen fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus, wounding two. Israel retaliated with planes and armor, killing five Palestinians.

An Israeli analyst said Hamas was plainly smarting from recent setbacks, including an April 2 Israel air strike which killed three Gazans, and which it vowed to avenge.

“The attack yesterday on a children’s bus is crossing a line,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Prague Friday.

“The Israeli Army responded immediately during the night and will continue to act with determination. Whoever tries to attack and murder children puts his life on the line,” he said.

The U.N. and EU called on the sides to show restraint and end the latest round of fighting. 

Israeli President Shimon Peres Friday has discussed concerns about recent rocket fire from Gaza into Israel with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban condemned the recent rocket fire from Gaza and expressed concerns about Palestinian civilian casualties in Israeli military operations.

In an unrelated development, newly revealed WikiLeaks documents quote a Jewish settler leader as saying most residents of West Bank settlements would be willing to relocate in exchange for compensation.

Publicly, the leader, Dani Dayan, has said settlers will not leave their homes under any circumstances.

In one of the WikiLeaks documents, written by U.S. diplomats in Tel Aviv, Dayan is quoted as saying most settlers will move “if the price is right.” – Agencies

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.