Posted on 03/01/2008 3:54:34 PM PST by Libloather
Israel kills 61 Palestinians as Gaza 'buries' peace process
03-01-2008, 11h28
GAZA CITY (AFP)
A Palestinian medical worker rushes a baby into the hospital in Gaza City. Israeli forces killed 61 Palestinians in a land and air blitz in the Hamas-held Gaza Strip on Saturday, medics said, amid warnings that the violence had "buried" the peace process. (AFP)
Israeli forces killed 61 Palestinians in a land and air blitz in the Hamas-held Gaza Strip on Saturday, medics said, amid warnings that the violence had "buried" the peace process.
It was the deadliest day since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005 and one of the most lethal Israeli operations since the Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000.
Fifty-four Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza, and two others in an air strike in the south of the territory which is ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas, medics said.
At least 13 civilians, seven of them women and including children, were among the dead and more than 150 people were wounded, Dr Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services, told AFP.
Five members of the Hamas "police" were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Rafah sector as they took shelter in a mosque that was hit by a missile, witnesses and medical sources in southern Gaza said.
Two Israeli soldiers were also killed on Saturday in Gaza, and another seven soldiers wounded, including one officer, the army said, as it battled to halt Palestinian rocket attacks on towns in southern Israel.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the Middle East peace talks formally revived in November at a US conference had been "buried" under the rubble of the Israeli incursion.
"The negotiations are buried under the houses that were destroyed in Gaza," Erakat told AFP. "The peace process has been destroyed because of the aggressions and the crimes that have been committed."
A member of the office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told AFP that the talks were now suspended.
"The president decided to suspend the negotiations as a protest to the Israeli aggression," he said, declining to be named.
As his spokesman warned that the operation would be open-ended, Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Hamas which seized power in Gaza in June bore "full responsibility" for the bloodshed.
"Hamas bears full responsibility and will pay the price. We are not happy that civilians have been victims but the responsibility is on Hamas and its firing of rockets at Israel," Barak said in a statement.
Israeli tanks supported by helicopters moved into northern Gaza just after midnight on Friday and by nightfall troops had fought their way nearly three kilometres (two miles) inside the Strip, according to witnesses.
Israel's public television reported that the army, which suffered its first deaths since the violence escalated on Wednesday, had deployed an "entire regiment," in Gaza, which would number around 2,000 soldiers.
The army said the operation was open-ended.
The urban battlefields were littered with debris as frightened Gazans hid inside their homes and imams read Koranic verses over mosque loudspeakers.
"We hear the rockets and the explosions everywhere... we cannot leave our homes," Jabaliya resident Abu Alaa, 40, told AFP by telephone as he and his children took cover.
The latest operation raised the death toll to 91 since Wednesday.
Abbas, whose Fatah forces were driven out of Gaza when Hamas seized power, urged "international protection for the Palestinian people", in an appeal from the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Abbas, warning that "innocent women, children and old people" were being targeted, called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the upsurge.
In Damascus, exiled Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal angrily accused Abbas of providing Israel with "a cover, voluntarily or involuntarily", to carry out its assault.
Since the peace talks were formally relaunched more than three months ago at least 296 people have been killed, the vast majority of them Gaza militants, according to an AFP count.
At least 20 militants were killed in Saturday's operation, most of them from Hamas, medics said. A bodyguard of Ismail Haniya, the Hamas premier dismissed by Abbas, was among the militants killed.
But Gaza militants still fired at least 40 rockets and mortars at southern Israel, including eight long-range rockets which crashed in and around the town of Ashkelon, 11 kilometres (seven miles) north of Gaza, the army said.
Six Israelis were wounded by the rockets that fell on Ashkelon, one of them seriously, it added.
The Gulf Arab states, other Arab countries, Iran and France condemned the Israeli operation, along with France which also called for a halt to Palestinian rocket attacks. Canada deplored the escalation in violence.
Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in the refugee camps of Lebanon, focusing their condemnation on the death toll among children.
The latest deaths brought to at least 6,257 the total number of people killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence since 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.
We will see that same baby every time Israel attacks GAZA
good to see him again. I’ll have to check his website and get his view from the “inside”.
39 posted on 03/01/2008 8:57:47 PM PST by Lijahsbubbe "
I have never seen other than mm/dd/yy anywhere.
Jan. 3, 08
yitbos
God bless Israel.
Israel is ready, willing and able to let the scumbag terrorists know that hiding behind civilians will not protect them. If Israel sends this message often enough, the scumbag terrorists will eventually figure it out. And maybe even the CIVILIANS will eventually figure out that ALLOWING the terrorists to use them as shields is a stone cold loser, but I am not holding my breath.
But then, that’s their problem.
That is absolutely correct. Israel handed over valuable land and tried to make peace but the effort was (surprise, surprise) not reciprocated by the Palestinians. Israel now needs to level the place and reclaim it.
Israel should be ashamed for fighting back against the terrorists! Israel has an obligation to sit still and accept the rocket attacks, without a word of protest or sympathy from the Europeans and others in the liberal MSM world.
The only debate is whether the Jewish people should stand still and get slaughtered, or simply walk into the sea?
(50% of those reading this post are incapable of recognizing SARCASM!!!!)
Salaam dhimmi Lori!
The picture is my cousin Rashid - a good Jew and America-hater, but not much under the helmet, if you know what I mean.
Alas, the dhimmi who runs my blog has been too busy to update for quite some time. Inshallah, and if the Zionist Entity invades again, this may change.
Many thanks for your kind words, and remember: As it is written in the Holy Koran, Detonator and Battery must never shake hands!
Green Helmet Guy
Sure, I have. There are international news sources that use day/month/year.
yitbos
Green helmet guy? Fake/already dead baby?
He’s holding it up for the cameras. The media are such willing dupes for the jihad.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it in Europe switched around like that. Probably means March 1.
Hmmm. Interesting.
Total brain disconnect. The Jews have been shelled for months like this. Their children have been maimed and sent to hospitals, but this Muslim can call the American News papers and make it to print with one day of trials.
Amazing the bias of the Jew hating American press.
Often in the middle east they transpose the month and day to day month year, it may just mean march 1 08.
Confirmed. I'm running XP. I go to Control Panel>Regional and Language Options. I select "Turkish." The "Short date" format changes to dd.mm.yyyy.
see link in post 58
thanks
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.