VARIOUS: Israel kills 7 Palestinians in Gaza in worse surge of violence in months.

Israeli troops killed seven Palestinians including four civilians and trapped scores of gunmen in Gaza on Thursday (November 2), witnesses said, in one of the army's biggest offensives in the strip in months. Two Palestinian civilians were killed late on Thursday in an Israeli airstrike just outside Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it had targeted two rocket squads, who had fired rockets into Israel earlier, close to a launching site. Earlier Israeli soldiers loaded many Palestinian residents into trucks and took them to the edge of Beit Hanoun for questioning, witnesses said. They said it was one of the biggest roundups of Gazans in years. The military said late on Thursday most of those held were released, with around 15 detained for further questioning. The latest casualties, confirmed by hospital officials, bring to 15 the number of Palestinians killed since Israeli troops entered Beit Hanoun on Wednesday. Earlier witnesses had reported one woman was killed by Israeli troops but a hospital official later said she was in a critical condition. In Gaza City, thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets to protest against the Israeli operation. They carried Hamas flags and chanted anti-Israeli slogans. Demonstrators then gathered to listen to Palestinian Prime Minister Isamil Haniyeh's speech. "Greetings to the hands that are on the rifle triggers, those who stand up in the field against the occupation and they do not run away. This comprehensive aggression in Beit Hanoun and the similar one they plan in Rafah and other areas came after they failed to bring the Palestinian government and to bring down the choice of the Palestinian people," Haniyeh told the cheering crowd. The offensive has further weakened any chance of resuming peace talks, already minimal since Hamas took office in March after winning elections. Hamas is sworn to Israel's destruction. Hamas has said the bloodshed could also complicate Egyptian-brokered talks aimed at arranging a swap of Palestinian prisoners in Israel for an Israeli soldier abducted by militants in a cross-border raid last June. Beit Hanoun, a town of 30,000 people in northern Gaza, was effectively under an army curfew, residents said. While the army operation is aimed partly at halting rocket fire at the Jewish state from the area, militants still managed to launch four homemade missiles at the nearby Israeli border town of Sderot, wounding two people, medical officials said. One Israeli soldier has been killed in the raid. More than half the Palestinians killed were militants. The assault is one of the biggest in the Palestinian territories since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza to try to force the release of the captured soldier and 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. 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 to recognise Israel and renounce violence. That prompted the West to impose sanctions on the Palestinian government. While opposed to explicit recognition of Israel, some Hamas officials have tried to formulate wording that suggests a softer position as part of efforts to agree a unity government with the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate. Palestinians hope such a government would help restore direct Western aid. jrs/jrc

ITN Source | November 3, 2006

Tags:. .worse. .recognise. .raid. .cheering. .destruction