allesennogwat
05-20-2007, 01:54 AM
AFP-Sunday May 20
Israel continues air raids as Gaza factions halt fighting
Israel targeted Hamas activists across the Gaza Strip Sunday after rival Palestinian factions clinched a new ceasefire deal to end a week of violence that has left at least 50 dead.
In the latest attack two Hamas militants were killed in an airstrike in Gaza City in the early hours Sunday, hospital sources said.
The deaths bring to 22 the number of Palestinians, including 18 Hamas activists, killed in Israeli airstrikes since the Jewish state resumed last week air attacks on the group to stop rocket attacks into southern Israel.
On Saturday Hamas and its rival Fatah clinched a new ceasefire deal to end a week of violence that has left at least 50 dead, including six civilians.
Gunmen began to abandon rooftop positions and to remove street barricades under the eye of Egyptian mediators and representatives of different factions, accompanied by the military adviser to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, General Abdel Razzaq al-Majaida.
"The agreement has begun to be applied," Majaida told AFP.
"The armed men are coming down from the tower blocks and the barriers are being removed."
It was the fifth such deal since violence erupted last Sunday, but the first in which steps were actually taken to implement it.
An AFP correspondent witnessed a dozen gunmen leave one of the highest vantage points in central Gaza City and also saw barricades being removed from Jalla Street.
The deal was struck at the Egyptian mission in Gaza in the presence of Haniya, who had been in contact with exiled Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal as well as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Abbas.
Israel, meanwhile, continued its aerial offensive on Gaza in a bid to curb the incessant rocket fire against its towns, which has intensified since the violence erupted between Hamas and Fatah.
On Saturday at least three people were killed in Israeli airstrikes, which the army claimed targeted militants who had just fired a rocket, as well as two metal-working shops where makeshift Qassam rockets were being built, plus the offices of an association linked to Fatah.
Despite the presence of Israeli forces along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, defiant militants have fired at least 50 rockets in recent days.
Those attacks have wounded six Israeli civilians and driven hundreds of people from the town of Sderot, which has borne the brunt of the barrage.
The rocket attacks continued Saturday, when one person was slightly wounded in Sderot.
Israeli tanks that had crossed into Palestinian territory in northern Gaza in recent days also opened fire at suspected rocket launchers, the army said. Five Palestinians were wounded in the raids.
Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said that while the army would continue operations to curb rocket fire, Israel did not intend to carry out an extensive ground offensive in Gaza, which it quit in 2005 after a 38-year presence.
"We should consider when the (ground) operation needs to be carried out. It is not necessary right now and we have sufficient room for manoeuvre," Peretz told public radio.
He said Israel would continue its operation in an effort to "reduce the Qassam fire and possibly bring it to a complete halt ... We are focusing on the most sensitive targets for Hamas and the rocket manufacturing facilities."
An Israeli soldier was lightly wounded in a rocket attack on an army bulldozer near Beit Hanun, in northern Gaza, an army spokesman said.
The Gaza bloodshed has raised the spectre of all-out civil war. It has also threatened to torpedo efforts to revive Middle East peacemaking after Arab states adopted a revived plan offering normal ties with Israel if it withdraws from all land occupied during the 1967 war.
The Palestinian unity cabinet including Hamas and Fatah that took office on March 17 in a Saudi-mediated deal was supposed to end factional fighting that killed more than 100 people in December and January.
But simmering tensions between the two rivals boiled over when a Hamas loyalist was killed by a Fatah man last Sunday.
Israel continues air raids as Gaza factions halt fighting
Israel targeted Hamas activists across the Gaza Strip Sunday after rival Palestinian factions clinched a new ceasefire deal to end a week of violence that has left at least 50 dead.
In the latest attack two Hamas militants were killed in an airstrike in Gaza City in the early hours Sunday, hospital sources said.
The deaths bring to 22 the number of Palestinians, including 18 Hamas activists, killed in Israeli airstrikes since the Jewish state resumed last week air attacks on the group to stop rocket attacks into southern Israel.
On Saturday Hamas and its rival Fatah clinched a new ceasefire deal to end a week of violence that has left at least 50 dead, including six civilians.
Gunmen began to abandon rooftop positions and to remove street barricades under the eye of Egyptian mediators and representatives of different factions, accompanied by the military adviser to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, General Abdel Razzaq al-Majaida.
"The agreement has begun to be applied," Majaida told AFP.
"The armed men are coming down from the tower blocks and the barriers are being removed."
It was the fifth such deal since violence erupted last Sunday, but the first in which steps were actually taken to implement it.
An AFP correspondent witnessed a dozen gunmen leave one of the highest vantage points in central Gaza City and also saw barricades being removed from Jalla Street.
The deal was struck at the Egyptian mission in Gaza in the presence of Haniya, who had been in contact with exiled Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal as well as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Abbas.
Israel, meanwhile, continued its aerial offensive on Gaza in a bid to curb the incessant rocket fire against its towns, which has intensified since the violence erupted between Hamas and Fatah.
On Saturday at least three people were killed in Israeli airstrikes, which the army claimed targeted militants who had just fired a rocket, as well as two metal-working shops where makeshift Qassam rockets were being built, plus the offices of an association linked to Fatah.
Despite the presence of Israeli forces along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, defiant militants have fired at least 50 rockets in recent days.
Those attacks have wounded six Israeli civilians and driven hundreds of people from the town of Sderot, which has borne the brunt of the barrage.
The rocket attacks continued Saturday, when one person was slightly wounded in Sderot.
Israeli tanks that had crossed into Palestinian territory in northern Gaza in recent days also opened fire at suspected rocket launchers, the army said. Five Palestinians were wounded in the raids.
Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said that while the army would continue operations to curb rocket fire, Israel did not intend to carry out an extensive ground offensive in Gaza, which it quit in 2005 after a 38-year presence.
"We should consider when the (ground) operation needs to be carried out. It is not necessary right now and we have sufficient room for manoeuvre," Peretz told public radio.
He said Israel would continue its operation in an effort to "reduce the Qassam fire and possibly bring it to a complete halt ... We are focusing on the most sensitive targets for Hamas and the rocket manufacturing facilities."
An Israeli soldier was lightly wounded in a rocket attack on an army bulldozer near Beit Hanun, in northern Gaza, an army spokesman said.
The Gaza bloodshed has raised the spectre of all-out civil war. It has also threatened to torpedo efforts to revive Middle East peacemaking after Arab states adopted a revived plan offering normal ties with Israel if it withdraws from all land occupied during the 1967 war.
The Palestinian unity cabinet including Hamas and Fatah that took office on March 17 in a Saudi-mediated deal was supposed to end factional fighting that killed more than 100 people in December and January.
But simmering tensions between the two rivals boiled over when a Hamas loyalist was killed by a Fatah man last Sunday.