Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israel pressed on with both its air and
ground offensive in Gaza on Thursday, as government officials were
due to travel to Cairo to discuss Egyptian-French truce proposals.
Residents reported heavy shelling in the southern Gaza border town
of Rafah overnight, as an Israeli military spokesman said Israel
bombed another 15 smuggling tunnels running under the border with
Egypt, as well as what he said was the house of a militant commander
who oversaw the rocket attacks from the Rafah area at nearby Israeli
targets.
Some 5,000 residents of Rafah fled to two UN schools that had
turned into shelters, after Israeli helicopters had dropped leaflets
warning them to leave their homes along the Gaza-Egypt border, saying
Hamas was using houses along the border to hide the entrances to the
weapons smuggling tunnels.
The Israeli delegation traveling to Cairo Thursday includes Amos
Gilad, the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security
Bureau and caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's foreign policy
adviser Shalom Turgeman.
Israel earlier on Wednesday said it viewed Egyptian-French
attempts to reach a diplomatic solution to the Gaza crisis
'positively.'
But it also threatened to expand its ground offensive if the
diplomatic attempts failed, with the Israeli cabinet in a meeting
Wednesday authorizing the continuation of the Gaza offensive.
The Israeli delegation wants to discuss the possibility of a
permanent American presence along the Gaza-Egypt border, as part of
the 'guarantees' it is seeking from the Egyptians and the
international community that the smuggling of further rockets and
parts into Gaza will stop, Israeli media reported.
Overall, the Israel Air Force bombed and rocketed some 60 targets
overnight, including the house of a Hamas commander in the southern
town of Khan Younis, a mosque 'used to store rockets and as meeting
point for Hamas militants' in northern Gaza and some 10 more 'rocket
storages,' several of them in the houses of Hamas militants
throughout the strip, the military said.
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