VARIOUS: Israeli offensive on Gaza enters second day, four Palestinians killed and one Israeli woman injured.

Violence continued to surge in the region on Thursday (November 2) as the Israeli army pressed on with one of its biggest operations in the Gaza Strip in months and militants reiterated with fire. While the army operation is partly aimed at halting rocket fire at the Jewish state from northern Gaza, militants managed to launch four homemade missiles at the nearby Israeli border town of Sderot, wounding one person and causing severe damage, medical officials said. The rocket lightly wounded an Israeli woman and set a house ablaze. Earlier on Thursday Israeli forces backed by tanks killed four Palestinians in Beit Hanoun, two of them civilians, medical officials said. Thousands of mourners took to the streets of the northern town to lay to rest two Palestinians killed earlier on Thursday. The mourners, including gunmen, chanted anti-Israel slogans and fired in the air. The latest casualties bring to 13 the number of Palestinians killed since Israeli troops entered Beit Hanoun on Wednesday. One Israeli soldier has been killed in the raid. More than half the Palestinians killed were militants. An Israeli army spokeswoman said all men in Beit Hanoun had been asked to gather in one place to answer questions. Relatives said one of the civilians killed on Thursday, a 75-year-old man, was shot by troops on a rooftop when he went onto the balcony of his home to take his disabled son inside. The army said its forces were targeting only militants. Among the dead was a Hamas gunmen who worked as a bodyguard for Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, witnesses said. Hospital officials said 15 people had been wounded, including four children and a woman injured when a tank shell hit their house. The offensive has further weakened any chance of resuming peace talks between the two sides, already minimal since the militant Hamas movement took office in March after winning elections. Hamas is sworn to Israel's destruction. "We are fully confident that this (Israeli) campaign would fail just as other campaigns had failed and the Palestinian people would remain unbreakable, and believe in their right. We tell the Israeli leaders to retreat their bloody policy because this will enhance the unrest in this area, you will never break the Palestinian people and will never blackmail the Palestinian government. Our Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves," Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza City. 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. The assault is one of the biggest since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza to try to force the release of the captured soldier and to halt the 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 adamantly 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. Palestinians hope such a government would help restore direct Western aid. Political sources in Gaza said there might be an announcement about progress on a unity administration later on Thursday. Abbas, a moderate, has suggested he might sack Haniyeh and his government if they do not relax their opposition to Israel. Abbas met with Assistant Secretary of State for near eastern affairs David Welch in the West Bank city of Ramallah to discus ways to form a Palestinian unity government and the Israeli raid on Gaza.

ITN Source | November 3, 2006

Tags:. .complicate. .missiles. .halting. .abducted. .retreat