46 Killed in Israeli strikes today.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html?hp


GAZA CITY — Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 46 people and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded, the military said.
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An apartment in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon was damaged by rocket fire.
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Hamas militants staked out positions in the northern Gaza Strip during an incursion by Israeli troops on Saturday.

The Israeli attacks, mostly from the air on a clear, bright day, were aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, especially after Ashkelon, a large city 10 miles from Gaza, came under fire from more advanced, Katyusha-style rockets smuggled in from Iran.

Half the dead were reported to be Hamas gunmen or those belonging to affiliated groups like Islamic Jihad. But as many as 19 Palestinian civilians also died in the heavily populated area, including four children, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain of the Gazan Health Ministry.

More than 70 Palestinians have died since fighting surged on Wednesday; one Israeli died in Sderot from a rocket, and six Israelis were wounded on Saturday from rocket strikes in Ashkelon.

The fighting brought harsh criticism from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who reportedly threatened to call off negotiations with Israel over a peace treaty. “We tell the world: watch and judge what’s happening, and judge who is committing international terrorism,” Mr. Abbas said in Ramallah, on the West Bank.

Mr. Abbas, who has referred to the rocket firing as useless provocation, said last week that armed conflict remained an option if negotiations failed.

An Israeli spokesman, David Baker, said that Israel was conducting “defensive measures” to protect its civilians from rocket fire against cities, which Mr. Baker called terrorism. “We have over 200,000 Israelis in range of Palestinian rockets. We cannot allow this to go on. These rocket attacks on Israelis are sheer terror, designed to kill or maim as many Israelis as possible.”


And the story goes on...

Hamas fighters battle on inspired by God

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Abu Mohammed picked up his rifle, said farewell to his wife and six children and went out to face the Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships and missile-firing airborne drones.

"Being unable to defeat Israel is no reason to surrender," the Hamas fighter said with a smile as he headed to the Gaza Strip's front line last Saturday, ignoring pleas from his family to stay.

"My children and wife are very dear to me," he said. "But reward in Heaven and the homeland are dearer."

The 38-year-old furniture salesman says he is not afraid to die for the cause of destroying Israel and forging a Palestinian state on all Israel's territory, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

To Israel and its allies, Abu Mohammed and his comrades are Jew-hating terrorists. But Abu Mohammed sees himself on a mission from God to rescue his people from 60 years of misery as refugees since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Though that conviction may, in some, mingle with bravado and self-interest, it does make Hamas an enemy to be reckoned with, for all that Israel's hi-tech army easily outguns their rifles, home-made rockets and, if they choose, their suicide bomb belts.

After five days of air strikes and ground assaults that it said aimed to halt Hamas rocket fire, Israel pulled out its troops on Monday after appeals from the United States that followed at international outcry at the dozens of civilians among over 100 dead.

more:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUKL0312451520080303

Times Online

At least eight people were killed tonight after two gunmen entered the library of a rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem and opened fire.

In the first major attack in the city for over three years the men walked into the library, where about 80 people were gathered, and opened fire. Around 35 people were also injured.

Yitzhak Dadon, a student, said he was armed with a rifle and killed one of the men from the roof of a nearby building.

He said: “He came out of the library spraying automatic fire. The terrorist came to the entrance and I shot him twice in the head."

The attack came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice persuaded moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to peace talks with Israel.

It came on the same day as Egyptian officials were trying to mediate a truce between Palestinian militants and Israel.

Medic Yaron Tzuker said he arrived as the gunfire was still going on.

“They were still shooting when we got here,” he told Channel 10 TV. “We took cover and the ambulance was hit. It’s horrible inside - dead bodies and wounded - it’s horrific.”

Another witness told Israel TV that he heard both single shots and automatic gunfire from inside the building, and it went on about 10 minutes.

The seminar is the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe quarter at the entrance to Jerusalem, a well-known centre of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. Most of the students are teenagers.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben Ruby said, “One or two terrorists infiltrated the Mercaz Harav seminary and opened fire in all directions. One terrorist was killed in an exchange of fire.”