Israel hits Gaza targets

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel bombarded Gaza with air strikes on
Friday in a widening military effort to secure the release of
an abducted Israeli soldier amid an Egyptian report that the
ruling Palestinian party has approved his freedom.

Israeli warplanes roared over Gaza striking at various
targets, including the office of Palestinian Interior Minister
Saeed Seyam, which caught fire after it was hit in the
intensifying military operation to free 19-year-old Israeli
Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by gunmen on Sunday.

Reports of a gunbattle in northern Gaza trickled in even as
an Egyptian newspaper reported that Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak said Hamas, the ruling Palestinian party, has told him
they have given conditional approval for Shalit’s release.

Three militant groups, including an armed wing of Hamas,
have claimed responsibility for the attack during which Shalit
was abducted.

Israel has said it holds Hamas responsible for his safe
return and has seized several members of the Islamic militant
group, including government ministers, in the West Bank.

Egypt’s al-Ahram newspaper also said Mubarak told it in an
interview that although Hamas has given conditional approval, a
handover agreement with Israel has not yet been reached.

“There were Egyptian communications which included a number
of Hamas leaders and resulted in initial positive results in
the form of a conditional approval by Hamas to turn over the
Israeli soldier as quickly as possible to avoid escalation,”
the newspaper paraphrased Mubarak as saying.

Israeli troops and tanks rolled into southern Gaza on
Wednesday in their first raid on the Palestinian enclave since
it pulled troops and settlers out of the territory last summer.

Forces have also massed near central and northern Gaza,
from which militants have fired dozens of rockets into Israel
since its pullout. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz has
said Israel will aim to stop rocket launchers during its
offensive.

ASSAULT DELAYED

Senior diplomatic sources and Israeli media said Israel has
delayed a large-scale assault in Gaza to allow for last-ditch
talks mediated by Egypt to try to secure the soldier’s release.

The army had no comment.

Members of Hamas, which is sworn to the Jewish state’s
destruction and which has led the Palestinian government since
it took office in March, were defiant in public.

“We swear to God that even if we are all crushed to death,
we will never recognize Israel and we will never abandon our
rights,” Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri told thousands of
supporters in Gaza City, as Israeli warplanes screamed
overhead.

The United States and other world powers have cut off
direct aid to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas won a
January parliamentary election, and have demanded Hamas disarm
and recognize the Jewish state and interim peace deals with it.

Israeli air strikes and artillery in recent days have
wounded several Palestinians and have destroyed bridges, water
systems and a major power transformer, causing blackouts in
most of Gaza, home to 1.4 million Palestinians.

Air strikes on Friday also targeted an office used by
President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group, injuring one Palestinian
outside the building. Missiles slammed into two Hamas training
camps and structures used by the Islamic group.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed the strikes, saying all
targets were abandoned at the time and that the Fatah office
was used by the faction’s militant group, al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades.

The Palestinian Resistance Committees, one of the militant
groups who claimed to have abducted Shalit, has said it would
not confirm whether he is alive.

Israeli forces rounded up dozens of Hamas cabinet ministers
and lawmakers in the West Bank on Thursday and has vowed to
bring them to trial on charges of involvement in “terror” acts
against the Jewish state. But it says they are not “bargaining
chips.”

Palestinian militants have demanded Israel free prisoners
in its jails in exchange for Shalit’s release.

(Additional reporting by Corinne Heller in Jerusalem)