Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israel's air force continued pounding the
Gaza Strip Thursday as its solders pressed on with attacks against
militants on the ground - while a UN aid agency, citing the danger to
its staff from the Israeli offensive, said it was halting aid
deliveries to the beleaguered salient.
Meanwhile, government officials who were in Cairo to discuss
proposals for ending the fighting, which has lasted 13 days so far and
claimed hundreds of fatalities, ended the talks without results,
Egyptian foreign ministry officials said.
Even as the Cairo talks on the ceasefire were taking place,
caretaker Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the bottom line of
the military campaign was to 'change the reality' in southern Israel,
meaning an end to militant rocket attacks from the enclave.
'To this we have not yet arrived, and the Israel Defence Force has
not yet been asked to carry out everything necessary to do so,' said
Olmert while visiting the army's Gaza division headquarters.
Also Thursday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency UNRWA
said it had 'suspended all movement of staff' in the Gaza Strip after
a driver bringing humanitarian supplies into the enclave was killed
when the aid convoy was fired upon. Later, another UN convoy with
international staff came under fire.
The aid convoy had UN flags and the drivers were wearing UNRWA
vests, the organization's spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said, noting that
details were still sketchy and that the agency was gathering more
information.
Abu Hasna said the suspension of activity was to protest the attack
and lack of access for aid workers in the enclave. However, it was
also a safety measure.
The second incident occurred during a three-hour lull in the
fighting designed to allow aid trucks into the enclave. The lull also
gave residents a chance to stock up on basic supplies and medical
teams an opportunity to reach the wounded and dead in areas which had
seen heavy fighting and were inaccessible to the medics.
Earlier, in an unusual move, the International Committee of the Red
Cross slammed Israel for not allowing medics to access the dead and
wounded in certain areas of the Gaza Strip during a four-day period,
thereby violating international law.
The organization said that during a lull Wednesday its rescue teams
had uncovered over 16 wounded and 18 killed, all trapped under rubble.
In one case, four emaciated children were found lying with their dead
mothers.
An Israeli military spokesman said Palestinian militants fired at
least four rockets at Israel during the pause, which lasted from 1 pm
and 4 pm (1100 GMT to 1400 GMT).
The first humanitarian lull, on Wednesday, had passed without
incident.
In the actual fighting, Israel had carried out approximately 24 air
attacks on targets in the Strip by mid-afternoon Thursday, an Israeli
military spokesman said. Militants launched at least 15 missiles at
mortars at Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, medical official Mo'aweya Hassanein said 11
Palestinians were killed Thursday and 40 were wounded. Rescue teams
who searched the rubble of destroyed buildings during the lull
Thursday afternoon found 35 bodies, including those of women and
children.
During Thursday's fighting in the Strip, two Israeli soldiers were
killed. One, an infantry officer, was hit by an anti-tank rocket fired
by militants in the morning, the second, a tank sergeant, was shot by
a sniper in the afternoon.
The latest deaths bring to 763 the number of Palestinians killed,
and 3,120 the number of wounded, in the 13 days of fighting. During
that time, eight Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed
as a result of rocket attacks and in the ground battles.
Residents reported heavy shelling in the southern Gaza border town
of Rafah overnight. 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 toward nearby Israeli targets.
Some 5,000 residents of Rafah fled to two UN schools turned into
shelters after Israeli helicopters dropped leaflets warning them to
leave their homes along the Gaza-Egypt border. The leaflets stated
Hamas was using houses along the border to hide the entrances to
tunnels used for weapons smuggling.
A guaranteed end to Hamas' arms supply is one of Israel's main
conditions for ending the fighting.
Although an Israeli Defence Ministry spokeswoman would give no
details of what defence ministry official Amos Gilad and Olmert's
advisor Shalom Turjeman had discussed in Cairo, Israeli media reported
they wanted to raise the possibility of a permanent American presence
along the Gaza-Egypt border.
The Israeli government earlier on Wednesday had said it viewed
Egyptian-French attempts to reach a diplomatic solution to the Gaza
crisis 'positively.' US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said
Wednesday that the United States, which has rejected several others,
supports the Egyptian initiative.
But Israel 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.
Thus far, the Israeli ground troops are stationed on the outskirts
of Gaza City, the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north and Khan Younis
in the south, but have avoided penetrating deep into populated areas.
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