GAZA/ JERUSALEM: Haniyeh calls Israeli offensive 'genocide' and on international community to intervene while Israeli official says army siege on mosque is legitimate according to international law.

Two Palestinian women acting as human shields between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen were killed during a stand-off at a Gaza mosque in Beit Hanoun. About 60 gunmen holed themselves up in the al-Nasir mosque on Thursday (November 2) evening. Israeli bulldozers demolished a wall of the mosque, and troops fired stun grenades and tear gas into the compound to try to force the gunmen to surrender. An Israeli military source said some militants had given themselves up. On Friday (November 3), around 50 veiled Palestinian women, answering an appeal on local radio, marched towards the mosque, attempting to act as a shield against the Israeli troops. Israeli forces opened fire towards the mosque and two of the women were killed. At least six others were wounded. The Israeli army said it had fired at armed Palestinians. It said it was investigating whether it had also shot the women. A spokeswoman said the army had television footage showing armed men mingling among the women as they headed towards the mosque. In the melee, the gunmen fled the shrine and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that heads the Palestinian government, said they had also managed to escape from Beit Hanoun, which is almost entirely surrounded by Israeli troops. The Israeli army confirmed the gunmen had escaped. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called on Friday on the international community to intervene and to stop the Israeli offensive on Gaza which killed 22 Palestinians, calling the Israeli attacks "genocide." "What is happening is a programmed genocide for the Palestinian people," Haniyeh added. Haniyeh's comments came on the third day of an Israeli assault on the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the largest operation it has conducted in the Gaza Strip in months, designed to put a stop to militants firing home-made rockets into Israel. With the latest attack, at least 22 Palestinians have been killed, more than half of them militants, since Israeli troops entered the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun on Wednesday. One Israeli soldier has been killed in the operation. Residents said Beit Hanoun, a town of 30,000 people, was effectively under full Israeli control, with a curfew imposed. There was a reaction on Friday from Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev. "The mosque became a legitimate military target the minute the Palestinian government took over the mosque and started shooting from it. The Hague convention is very clear - if you take a religious site and you turn it into a military operational point then it becomes a legitimate military target" he said. Meanwhile in Gaza City Palestinians brought to burial four Hamas militants killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier on Friday in Gaza. In the air strike, Hamas sources said a vehicle carrying four members of its group was hit by a missile in Gaza City. An Israeli military source confirmed an "aerial attack on a vehicle carrying terrorists", but gave no further details. Ammar Mushtaha, a Hamas commander who had survived previous assassination attempts, was among the four killed, as well as a bodyguard for one of the ministers in the Hamas-led government. The Gaza assault is one of the biggest in the Palestinian territories since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza to try to force the release of an Israeli soldier abducted by militants in a cross-border raid in June, as well as to halt rocket fire. More than 280 Palestinians have been killed in the four-month-old offensive, about half of them civilians. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed. The offensive, partly to try to halt militant rocket attacks on Israel, has further weakened any chance of peace talks, already minimal since Hamas, the Islamist militant group, won elections. Hamas is officially sworn to Israel's destruction. Israel withdrew its army and Jewish settlers from Gaza last year after a 38-year occupation, but tension increased along the frontier when Hamas took office and rebuffed Western demands that it recognise Israel and renounce violence.

ITN Source | November 3, 2006

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