KavkazCenter - Israeli army retakes northern Gaza

Israeli army retakes northern Gaza

Israeli aircraft, artillery pound Gaza Strip with air raids and ground assaults for ninth consecutive night.

Israeli tanks and troops ploughed back into the northern Gaza Strip Thursday, spearheading their biggest offensive to stop Palestinian rocket attacks since withdrawing from the territory 10 months ago.

A Palestinian policeman and two militants from the armed wing of the ruling movement Hamas were killed as Israeli aircraft and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip with air raids and ground assaults for the ninth consecutive night.

The push followed a rocket attack on the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon for the second consecutive night.

Ground forces, armoured vehicles and sappers thrust three kilometres (two miles) into northern Gaza, moving into three disbanded Jewish settlements and an industrial zone overnight, Palestinian security sources said.

Israeli forces took over the remains of Dugit, Elei Sinai and Nissanit, dismantled last September as part of Israel's historic pullout from the territory after a 38-year occupation, the sources added.

Further troops massed on the edge of the towns of Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya, in the deepest Israeli ground thrust into Gaza since a teenage soldier was captured by militants, including from Hamas, on June 25.

"Our forces will deploy as deeply and as long as necessary to guarantee rockets can no longer reach the towns of Ashkelon and Sderot," Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer told army radio.

"The purpose is to put an end to the Palestinian territories firing rockets on Israeli towns and cities and to restore peace," a source in the prime minister's office told AFP.

An unprecedented Hamas rocket attack on the centre of Ashkelon on Tuesday smashed into a school, causing extensive damage and seeing the Israeli security cabinet ordering the military to expand its operations in the Gaza Strip.

Olmert himself branded the attack on Ashkelon a "severe escalation in the terrorist war being waged by Hamas", which he warned would have "far-reaching consequences".

But on Wednesday night, a second Palestinian rocket crashed into an open area of the Mediterranean city, causing no damage or casualties.

The security cabinet had already ordered the military to intensify air raids against Hamas and so-called targeted killing operations against militants who launch or order rocket attacks, and to surround Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya.

An interdiction zone - essentially a buffer zone to stop Palestinian rocket attacks striking southern Israel - was also to be enlarged and enforced by aircraft and artillery.

Witnesses said that tanks had pushed into an industrial zone, entering the sites of all the former Israeli settlements in northern Gaza as an AFP photographer at the scene reported heavy machine-gun and mortar fire.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Israelis and Palestinians to exercise restraint but said it was "high time" for Hamas to return 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, whose capture sparked the Middle East crisis.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also urged both sides to "to step back from the brink" in what he said was a "dangerous" situation.

Speaking before Israeli troops ploughed deeper into the north, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said Israeli plans to enlarge an interdiction zone in one of the most-densely populated areas on earth would only make matters worse.

The European Union cautioned that the army's operations had delayed efforts to get much-needed funding to the Palestinian people, as 1.4 million people living in the impoverished Gaza Strip grapple with food, fuel and power cuts.

But repeated international calls for restraint have largely fallen on deaf ears in what has become the worst Middle East crisis since Hamas came to power in March and Olmert formally took the helm in Israel in May.

Three Palestinians were killed and 10 others wounded in Israel's overnight assault. A police officer and Hamas mlitant died when an Israeli shell exploded, also wounding seven policemen.

A second member of Hamas's armed Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades was killed and three other people were wounded during an Israeli air raid.

Claiming responsibility for Tuesday's rocket strike on Ashkelon, the armed wing of Hamas vowed to step up its attacks after Israel rejected a prisoner swap and pressed on with its Gaza offensive.

The Qassam Brigades said it used a "new type of rocket" with a longer range than those fired daily at Israel in recent days, promising "a new era of violence" if the Jewish state did not stop its military operation.

Despite the expiry early Tuesday of an ultimatum set by Shalit's Palestinian captors, Olmert has ruled out negotiations with militants and promised to strike anyone linked to them, in a thinly-veiled reference to Syria.

The shadowy Army of Islam, one of three groups that claims to be holding Shalit in the Gaza Strip, said Tuesday he would not be killed.

The group, together with the armed wing of Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees, snatched him in a raid on an army post in which two other soldiers and two militants were killed.

The prime minister of the Hamas-led government, Ismail Haniya, said his administration continued to appeal for the soldier's life and good treatment.

Source: Middle East Online