Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:41:01
Yousef Al-Helou, Press TV, Gaza
(Windows Media or Real Player)Related News:
An Israeli Attack on Gaza Leaves Four Fighters Dead
Source: IMEMC
In a new fresh Israeli attack on southern Gaza today, Israeli military killed four Palestinian resistance fighters.
Earlier in the day, an Israeli contingent swept into the Qarrara town in southeastern Gaza, as Israeli drones rocketed a group of fighters, while the latter were defending the area.
Dr. Mo'awiya Abu Hasanin, chief of hospital and emergency department at the Hamas-run ministry, confirmed to IMEMC that corpses of the four killed were found earlier in the day in eastern Qarrra town in southern Gaza.
Abu Hasanin denied reports that a Palestinian woman was injured during the Israeli attack, asserting all those killed were resistance fighters.
The Alqassam brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Hamas party in Gaza, declared four of its fighters were killed by the Israeli troops.
Meanwhile, Israeli sources claimed that an Israeli drone spotted a number of 'militants', while planting explosives near the border fence with Israel to the east of Alqarrara town in southern Gaza.
Witnesses said that the Israeli drones fired at least two rockets towards the fighters who were clashing with a number of invading tanks near a local school.
Witnesses added that the heavy Israeli artillery shelled Palestinian-owned houses in the area, as an Israeli military bulldozer demolished the house of Abdallah Alsemairy, after having forced inhabitants out.
The said Israeli invasion is the second in less than two weeks after the Israeli army killed 8 Palestinians including six Hamas fighters.
Such attacks come in the shadow of a shaky Egyptian-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza, signed in June of this year.
Amnesty International Report on the Situation:
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PUBLIC STATEMENT
AI Index: MDE 15/045/2008
5 November 2008
Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT): Gaza ceasefire - Israel and Hamas must step back from the brink
Amnesty International is concerned that the spate of Israeli and Palestinian attacks and counter-attacks in the past 24 hours could spell the end of a five-and-a-half-month ceasefire and put the civilian populations of Gaza and southern Israel once again in the line of fire.
The killing of six Palestinian militants in Gaza by Israeli forces in a ground incursion and air strikes on 4 November was followed by a barrage of dozens of Palestinians rockets on nearby towns and villages in the south of Israel. The Palestinian attacks caused no casualties or damage, but there is a real risk that any further armed actions by either side could ignite another deadly campaign.
The ceasefire which was agreed between Israel and Hamas last June and which has been in force since then has been the single most important factor in reducing civilian casualties and attacks on civilians to their lowest levels since the outbreak of the uprising (intifada) more than eight years ago.
Before the ceasefire came into force on 19 June 2008, in the first half of the year, some 420 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces, half of them unarmed civilians and including some 80 children. In the same period Palestinian armed groups killed 24 Israelis, 15 of them civilians and including four children. In the past eight years Israeli-Palestinian violence has cost the lives of some 4,750 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis. Most of the victims on both sides have been unarmed civilians, including some 900 Palestinian children and 120 Israeli children.
The ceasefire has brought enormous improvements in the quality of life in Sderot and other Israeli villages near Gaza, where before the ceasefire residents lived in fear of the next Palestinian rocket strike. However, nearby in the Gaza Strip the Israeli blockade remains in place and the population has so far seen few dividends from the ceasefire. Since June 2007, the entire population of 1.5 million Palestinians has been trapped in Gaza, with dwindling resources and an economy in ruins, and unable to leave. Some 80 per cent of the population now depend on the trickle of international aid that the Israeli army allows in.
If the current ceasefire breaks down and daily attacks resume, the civilian populations in both Israel and Gaza will pay the highest price. Amnesty International calls on both sides to step back from the brink and to avoid at all costs a return to the vicious spiral of violence which has cost so much in human lives.
Public Document
****************************************
For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 or email: press@amnesty.org
International Secretariat, Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW, UK www.amnesty.org
(Windows Media or Real Player)Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment