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Israeli Ground Forces Enter Gaza In Escalation - UPDATES

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Bianca
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« Reply #30 on: January 06, 2009, 07:28:19 pm »









CARNAGE AT SCHOOL



After nightfall, fighting eased to a sporadic rhythm of explosions and gunfire across the enclave. On Tuesday, 77 civilians were killed taking the total Palestinian death toll to 631, compared to 10 Israelis, seven of them soldiers.

Israel says it has killed dozens of militants this week in intensive close-quarter combat. Arab and widespread international anger mounted on Tuesday, however, when Israel admitted mortaring a United Nations school where hundreds of people were taking refuge. Medics said 42 people were killed.

The Israeli army accused Hamas militants of using civilians as "human shields" and said its troops had been returning mortar fire from the school.

An aide said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a bitter foe of Hamas, had ordered officials to look into taking Israel to international courts over the incident. A U.N. spokesman said it wanted an inquiry into both the incident and the Israeli allegations about militants firing from its schools.

The school killing could intensify pressure on Israel for a ceasefire. During Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah, the deaths of 28 unarmed Lebanese in shelling at the village of Qana intensified international pressure on the Jewish state to negotiate a ceasefire.

The deaths in the school prompted Obama to break his silence on the Gaza offensive, to say the loss of life among civilians was "a source of deep concern" for him. Obama said he would not engage in policy until he was in office but vowed to work rapidly thereafter to secure peace in the Middle East.

Some commentators have said the U.S. presidential transition has exposed the United States to greater risks from Israel's action in Gaza. Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri called on the Internet for Muslims to "hit the interests of the Zionists and Crusaders wherever and in whichever way you can."

Washington's allies in Arab governments have condemned the Israeli assault, which has contributed to rising oil prices, and the always vocally anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, another OPEC member, called it a "holocaust."

Venezuela also expelled the Israeli ambassador.

Hamas, which has rebuffed Western demands to recognize Israel, end violence and accept existing interim peace deals, has demanded a lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip in any future ceasefire. It seized the territory in 2007, 18 months after it won a Palestinian parliamentary election.

That created a schism with Abbas's Fatah faction that helped kill off the outgoing U.S. administration's efforts to broker a peace with Israel that would have created a Palestinian state. The violence in Gaza this month has raised questions over Obama's ability to do better.



(Additional reporting by
Dan Williams and
Adam Entous in Jerusalem,

Aziz el-Kaissouni in Sharm el-Sheikh and

Claudia Parsons at the United Nations;

Writing by Alastair Macdonald;

editing by Myra MacDonald)
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