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Israel intensifies Gaza action
Israel has begun fresh air strikes in the Gaza Strip after pledging to intensify its military offensive on the territory that has killed 51 Palestinians in two weeks.
One Palestinian was killed and four others wounded in a series of Israeli air strikes in the northern industrial zone of Bait Hanun, medics said on Tuesday.
The Israeli military confirmed an air raid in the Bait Hanun area of northern Gaza, the site of two earlier strikes on Tuesday.
The dead man was named Ahmed Shahid, who was struck by a missile fired towards a car, the sources said.
Israeli aircraft also carried out two overnight air strikes against a bridge in the northern Gaza Strip and against a "gunman" west of the Karni transit point for goods entering and leaving the Palestinian territory, a spokesman said.
Ground troops are massed on the eastern and northern border of the impoverished territory - one of the most densely populated areas on earth - and are also stationed east of Gaza City and in the south near a defunct airport.
Israel says the massive operation is to secure the release of a captured soldier on June 25, and halting Palestinian rocket attacks.
Palestinian medics said on Tuesday that patients treated in Shifa hospital in Gaza and bodies at the mortuary presented unusual burns, raising concerns that Israel was using chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, Israeli defence sources said the government had given the military the green light to continue and, if necessary, intensify the so-called Summer Rain offensive with infantry and armour poised to carry out "in depth" incursions.
The approval was granted during consultations late on Monday between Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and the defence minister, Amir Peretz, who faced their biggest test since the new Israeli government took office on May 4.
Olmert is due to hold talks with military commanders on Tuesday with a view to continuing the offensive, the largest operation since Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in September.
Chemical weapons?
In Shifa hospital, Dr al-Saqqa said most of the dead bodies taken to the facility were torn apart and completely burnt."Even bodies of the injured have been almost completely burnt. They have been deformed in a very ugly way that we have never seen before," he told Aljazeera channel.
Al-Saqaa, who heads the hospital's emergency service, said relatives had been unable to identify the dead victims.
"When we try to X-ray dead bodies, we find no trace of the shrapnel that hit the person killed," he said, adding that the bodies seemed to have been chemically burnt.
"We are sure that Israel is using a new chemical or radioactive weapon in the new operation. More than 25% of the injured are children, aged under 16."
Four teenagers playing football were among the dead on Monday.
At least 51 Palestinians have been killed since the operation started two weeks ago. An Israeli soldier also died as a result of "friendly fire", according to the Israeli military.
No end in sight
On Monday, Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, demanded a prisoner swap for freeing the captured soldier but Olmert said that would be a "major mistake".
Hamas's armed wing - along with two other militant groups, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Army of Islam -claims to be holding the soldier.
Olmert has rejected international accusations that the response to the soldier's capture was disproportionate, saying that Israel's pullout from Gaza after 38 years of occupation has been followed only by continued violence.
Aid groups have expressed concern about the difficulties of providing assistance to 1.4 million people living in Gaza after months of financial difficulties and the suspension of direct Western aid to the Hamas-led government.
Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, is due to arrive in the region on Tuesday for separate talks with Olmert and the Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on a trip he hopes will help to calm the situation.
Israel pressed to allow Gaza aid
he Israeli military is conducting an offensive in Gaza following the capture of one of its soldiers two weeks ago.
A spokesman for the groups said that withholding food, fuel and essential equipment was collective punishment in violation of international law.
Israel has allowed brief openings of the main goods crossings into Gaza.
But lengthy closures have made the already dire humanitarian situation worse.
Israel is required... by law to discern at all times between military and civilian targets
High court petition
The UN has 230 containers of food waiting to pass through the Karni cargo crossing between Israel and Gaza, which has been closed since Monday, officials say.
Before the offensive, UN aid relief workers were giving daily food rations to 735,000 Gazans, more than half the overcrowded territory's population of 1.4m people.
Frequent closures are justified by Israel on security grounds - crossing points are the only place where Palestinian militants can get close enough to Israeli troops to launch guerrilla attacks.
The groups' petition to the high court also demands that Israeli force stop attacking civilian targets such as bridges and power stations.
"Israel is required... by law to discern at all times between military and civilian targets, to avoid attacking obvious civilian targets such as power stations and to participate actively in supplying the basic needs of the civilian population," the petition says.
Fuel crisis
The European Union has started delivering emergency fuel supplies to public hospitals in Gaza.
Hospitals are having to use generators, after the Israeli army attacked the main power plant.
They are the first supplies to be sent through a temporary funding mechanism set up by the Quartet group of mediators in the Middle East conflict - the EU, United Nations, United States and Russia.
The Palestinian government has welcomed the aid but said the EU was undermining Palestinian democracy by bypassing the Hamas-led administration.
Western donors refuse to send direct aid to the government until Hamas renounces violence and recognises Israel.
European officials say a second delivery of aid will begin in the next few days, paying cash allowances directly to Palestinian health workers who have not been paid for four months.
In addition to more than 50 Palestinians killed by military action, a number of deaths have occurred among more than 500 people stranded at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
Egyptian health officials said an 18-month-old Palestinian boy died from heat stroke on Tuesday, as well as a 19-year-old woman waiting to return to Gaza after undergoing surgery in Egypt.
The crossing has been closed by Israel since the capture of Cpl Gilad Shalit on 25 June to prevent the soldier being smuggled into Egypt, Israeli officials say.
Palestinian killed in Gaza air strike
GAZA CITY (AFP) - One Palestinian was killed and four others wounded on Tuesday in an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip, local medical sources said.
Three Palestinians wounded in West Bank
NABLUS, West Bank (AFP) - Three Palestinians were shot and wounded by Israeli troops conducting an arrest operation in the northern West Bank town of Nablus on Tuesday, witnesses and medical sources said.
During the operation, teenagers threw stones at the Israeli soldiers who responded with rubber bullets and live fire, wounding two young people and an ambulance worker, the sources said.
Syrians rally to back Palestinians against Israel
DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syrian students and trade unionists demonstrated Tuesday in the northern city of Aleppo in support of Palestinians facing "Israeli aggression", the official SANA news agency said.
Protestors called on the international community to "end Israeli human rights violations" in the Gaza Strip.
Haniya warns against Gaza 'humanitarian tragedy'
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya warned Tuesday against a "humanitarian tragedy" developing in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel's continuing "blockade" of the impoverished territory.
Haniya stressed "the great suffering of the Palestinian people, in particular in the Gaza Strip, which is on the verge of a veritable humanitarian tragedy due to the lack of basic foodstuffs caused by the blockade."
Israel has kept Gaza effectively sealed since a soldier was captured by Palestinian militants on June 25, occasionally opening crossings to allow aid through while carrying out nightly air raids in a bid to free the conscript.
In a statement following his weekly cabinet meeting, Haniya deplored "the Palestinians' critical living conditions in the Gaza Strip... because of a lack of food, fuel and medicine."
Abbas seek Jordan's help to stop Israeli offensive
AMMAN (AFP) - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met Jordan's King Abdullah II on Tuesday to ask for his help in stopping the two-week-old Israeli offensive in Gaza in which more than 50 Palestinians have been killed.
Call for probes into shootings of two Palestinian photographers by Israeli troops
Reporters Without Borders today condemned the action of the Israeli troops who shot and wounded Palestinian news photographers Hamid Al Khur and Mohammad Al Zaanoun on 7 and 8 July while they were covering clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“Khur and Zaanoun were both wearing yellow vests that clearly identified them as journalists, so there was no way they could have been mistaken for combatants,” Reporters Without Borders said, calling on the Israeli authorities to carry out investigations to establish how they came to be shot.
Khur, a photographer with the Turkish news agency Ihlas, was shot twice by Israeli soldiers on 7 July while covering clashes between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. Khur, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time, was hit first in the chest and then in the right arm. He was initially taken to Kamal Adwan hospital, and from there to a hospital in Jerusalem the next day.
Zaanoun, a photographer with the Palestinian online news agency Ma’an, was working in the district of al-Zaitoun, south of Gaza City, when Israeli tanks arrived on the morning of 8 July. He was wounded while photographing the bodies of two Palestinian militants who had been killed in the course of the Israeli incursion. He continued to take photographs until shot in the leg and stomach by an Israeli sniper. He was taken to an Israeli hospital where he was said to be in a critical condition.
