GAZA: Palestinians in southern Gaza bury dead of latest Israeli airstrikes

An Israeli air strike killed a Palestinian in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday (August 6, 2006), medics said, as Israel pressed its offensive against militants. Five Palestinians, including two militants, were killed by Israeli missiles fired from the air on Saturday (August 5) in the Rafah area. Israeli forces swept into the southern region on Thursday (August 3) to destroy what the army called "terrorist infrastructure" as part of a wider offensive against militants, launched after gunmen captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid on June 25. Medics said the Palestinian killed in the latest air strike was a civilian and that four other unarmed people were wounded. An Israeli army spokesman said fire was directed towards a person spotted moving suspiciously towards Israeli forces operating in the area. In internal Palestinian violence, gunmen shot and critically wounded the head of Palestinian military intelligence for the northern Gaza Strip and one of his bodyguards, security officials said. Military intelligence is controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction was defeated by the rival Hamas movement in the Palestinian parliamentary election in January. Israel's Gaza offensive has killed at least 167 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians. Israel has rejected demands by the three militant groups that captured Corporal Gilad Shalit in the raid, which includes Hamas, to trade the soldier for Palestinian prisoners. A local representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the groups had rejected a new request by the ICRC to visit the soldier. Israel's offensive has increased pressure on Hamas, which rose to power in March, and had been under a Western aid embargo to try to force it to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept peace deals. ENDS.

ITN Source | August 7, 2006

Tags:. .march. .pressed. .saturday. .june. .controlled