Israeli strikes kill 54 in Gaza
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer 8:15pm PST
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops turned heavy firepower on rocket squads
bombarding southern Israel Saturday, killing 54 Palestinians in the deadliest day in Gaza
since the current round of fighting erupted in 2000.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded in the clashes, the military said.
The violence took a heavy toll on Gaza civilians. Moderate Palestinian leaders called the
killings a "genocide" and threatened to call off peace talks.
"The response to these rockets can't be that harsh and heinous," said Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas. "It is nowadays described as a holocaust."
The spasm of violence came days before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to
arrive in the region to nudge Israel and Palestinians closer to a peace accord. But the
rising tensions threatened to mar her visit.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe expressed regret
for loss of civilian life on both sides but put most of the blame on the Palestinians.
"There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and
action in self-defense," he said in a statement.
The U.N. Security Council met Saturday night behind closed doors in emergency session
at the request of the Palestinians and their Arab supporters.
"We want a condemnation of the killings and we want also a call for a cease-fire by the
Security Council," said the Arab League's U.N. observer, Yahya Mahmassani. "What's
happening now is jeopardizing the peace process."
Such resolutions have failed repeatedly in the past because of U.S. and European
objections that they are not balanced in their condemnation.
Early Sunday, Israeli aircraft destroyed the office building in Gaza City used by Hamas
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, witnesses said. Five people were lightly wounded in the
raid.
At least two dozen Palestinian civilians, including a baby, were among those killed
Saturday, and militants said 25 fighters died. Health officials said about 200 people were
wounded, 14 of them critically.
The overall death toll was the highest in a single day since the current round of violence
erupted in September 2000. The highest previous death toll was 38 on March 8, 2002.
The intense fighting pushed the Palestinian death toll to more than 80 since fighting
flared Wednesday. About half of those were civilians.
While expressing regret for civilian casualties, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
blamed "Hamas and those firing rockets at Israel," his office said in a statement, pledging
to continue the offensive to protect Israeli towns and cities.
On Friday, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai renewed a threat to invade Gaza
to crush militant rocket squads that attack southern Israel daily.
Palestinian fighters kept up a steady stream of rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli
targets, firing around 50 on Saturday alone in defiance of the Israeli assault. Six Israelis
were injured by rockets that reached as far as Ashkelon, a coastal city 11 miles north of
Gaza.
The Israeli military said one of its airstrikes on northern Gaza targeted a parked truck
loaded with 160 rockets.
On Thursday, militants raised the stakes by firing Iranian-made rockets into Ashkelon,
striking closer to Israel's heartland than ever before and putting more Israelis at risk.
Palestinian rocket fire earlier in the week also killed an Israeli man.
Shortly before midnight Friday in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, a 13-month-old girl
was killed by shrapnel. Hamas blamed Israel, but residents said a militant rocket fell short
and landed near the baby's house. The day's violence snowballed from that point on.
Before dawn Saturday, the battleground shifted to the town of Jebaliya and its nearby
refugee camp, a center of militant activity in northern Gaza.
Soldiers backed by tanks and aircraft conducted house-to-house searches and took up
positions on rooftops as they clashed with militants detonating land mines and firing
heavy machine guns, assault rifles and mortar rounds.
A wounded man and boy lay in a gutter near a dead man. Ambulance workers took away
the dead man as a youth appealed to paramedics to treat the wounded.
"Take them, they are still alive," he pleaded. Another man urged the wounded to "bear
witness," or proclaim their Muslim faith before they die. The two began reciting a Muslim
prayer near a boy whose lower body was ripped by shrapnel.
Tareq Dardouna, a Jebaliya resident, said a relative was killed outside his home in the
crossfire that began at 3 a.m.
"His body is still on the ground," Dardouna said in a telephone interview from his home,
where he was tending to four wounded people amid screaming children. "Ambulances
tried to come, but they came under fire. ... We are in a real war."
Two sisters and another civilian were killed by tank shells that struck two houses in
separate attacks in Jebaliya, Palestinian officials said.
At one of the damaged houses, paramedics rushed an unmoving woman lying on a
stretcher, her face covered with a cloth, out of a room clouded with dust.
By evening, more than 40 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers had been killed in the
Jebaliya fighting.
All but the most critically injured were sent home from Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest.
Beds crammed hospital corridors, and the intensive care unit was overflowing, a doctor at
the hospital said. The doctors union urged its members to cancel leaves and appealed for
blood donations.
The U.N. shuttered 37 schools it runs in northern Gaza because of the fighting, affecting
some 40,000 students said Christopher Gunness, a U.N. official. A three-day strike was
declared in Gaza, and publicly run schools and universities were closed.
Mosques across northern Gaza and Hamas-affiliated radio appealed to civilians to stay
home. Hamas closed off roads to evacuate security compounds and to keep residents
away from potential airstrike targets. They also turned off street lights, apparently so
militants wouldn't be seen from the air.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said Palestinian leaders including Abbas
recommended suspending peace talks at a meeting Saturday in the West Bank town of
Ramallah.
"I think it will be suspended," Qureia said. "What is happening in Gaza is a massacre of
civilians, women and children, a collective killing, genocide," Qureia added. "We can't
bear what the Israelis are doing, and what the Israelis are doing doesn't led the peace
process any credibility."
Hamas remained defiant and vowed to retaliate.
In Syria, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal described Israeli attacks against civilians in
Gaza as "the real Holocaust."
"If (Israeli officials) decided stupidly to invade Gaza, we will fight them with God's help,"
Mashaal told reporters from his base in Damascus. "We will fight them like lions."
Mashaal blamed the rival Fatah, headed by Abbas, for helping along Israel's attacks.
"I accuse the president of the Palestinian Authority of providing coverage of this
holocaust in Gaza," Mashaal said. Hamas has said Abbas' condemnation of rocket fire has
given a pretext to Israel's assault on Gaza.
Israeli officials met Saturday to discuss the Gaza violence and its implications for
peacemaking. Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said talks didn't preclude fighting.
Talks are "based on the understanding that when advancing the peace process with
pragmatic (Palestinian) sources, Israel will continue to fight terror that hurts its people,"
he said.
Vice Premier Haim Ramon told Channel 2 TV that Israel should fight in Gaza, but not
reoccupy it. Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the tiny seaside territory in late
2005, but militants proceeded to fire rockets from the abandoned territory at Israeli
communities.
Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, took control of Gaza by force from the rival
Fatah in June.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Israel was "compelled to continue to
take these defensive measures" to protect more than 200,000 Israelis living under the
threat of Palestinian rocket barrages.
Militants "hide behind their own civilians, using them as human shields, while actively
targeting Israeli population centers," Baker said. "They bear the responsibility for the
results."
Israeli military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich called Saturday's action a "pinpoint
operation" provoked by the rocket attack on Ashkelon earlier in the week. She blamed the
high civilian toll on Hamas' practice of using homes to store and produce projectiles.
"We are not targeting homes and we have no intentions of targeting uninvolved
civilians," she said. "We will target launchers and Hamas militants, and bunkers."
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which had been in a deep freeze for seven years, resumed
in November at a U.S.-sponsored conference. At the gathering, the two sides pledged to
try to reach an accord by the end of this year. In recent weeks, negotiators have met
almost daily.
But even when violence is at a lower level, Abbas' efforts are compromised by the fact
that he only rules the West Bank, while Gaza is controlled by Hamas. And Israel's fragile
government would be hard pressed to make concessions to the Palestinians while Gaza
militants pummel southern Israel.
___
Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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