AFP
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Israel and Palestinian resistance fighters resumed fire across the Gaza border yesterday, sparking panic across the war-torn enclave and halting truce talks.
Gaza emergency services said that a woman and a child were killed and 16 people injured in one strike in Gaza City. Another eight people were hurt in earlier air raids across the strip, they said.
An Israeli military statement said that at least eight rockets were fired at Israel, with six falling on open ground and two more being intercepted by missile defences.
A rocket fired from Gaza struck as far as the Tel Aviv area, the military said, in the deepest rocket attack since a truce calmed fighting about 10 days ago. It said the rocket landed in an open area, causing no casualties.
The Hamas group said it had fired 40 rockets at Israel, one of them aimed at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, after Israel resumed air strikes.
Israel launched a new round of air strikes on Gaza after claiming that the rocket fire from Gaza had begun several hours before a 24-hour truce was to expire.
Although it claimed responsibility for later strikes, Hamas said it had no knowledge of any rockets being fired earlier in the day, while the Cairo talks were still underway.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri accused Israel of trying to wreck the truce talks.
“We don’t have any information about firing rockets from Gaza. The Israeli raids are intended to sabotage the negotiations in Cairo,” he told AFP.
The fighting shattered nine days of relative quiet in the skies over Gaza and cast a dark shadow over Egyptian-mediated efforts to hammer out a longer-term truce.
“There has been no progress,” Azzam al-Ahmed, the chief Palestinian negotiator in Cairo said yesterday. “Matters have become more complicated.”
A statement from Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately obstructing truce efforts and said that his group would now “examine all options in the light of developments in the situation... and facts on the ground”.
But Israel’s US ally put the blame squarely on the group itself.
“Hamas has security responsibility for Gaza... Rocket fire came from Gaza,” US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
The renewal of Israeli air strikes spread panic among Gaza residents.
An AFP reporter saw hundreds of Palestinians streaming out of Shejaiya, an eastern area of Gaza City which has been devastated by more than a month of fighting between Israel and the militant Islamist Hamas movement.
More poured out of the Zeitun and Shaaf areas, alarmed by a series of explosions and heading to shelter in UN schools, local witnesses said.
An Israeli official said the Jewish state’s negotiating team had been ordered back from Cairo where Egypt has been pushing for a decisive end to the Gaza bloodshed, which has killed more than 2,000
Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side.
“The Cairo process was based on the premise of a total ceasefire,” another official told AFP. “If Hamas fires rockets, the Cairo process has no basis.”
The army said that it has ordered that public bomb shelters within 80km of the Gaza border, be opened ready for use.
Israel has vowed not to negotiate under fire, and Netanyahu has warned there would be “a very strong response” to any resumption of rocket attacks.
The Cairo talks centre on an Egyptian proposal that meets some of the Palestinian demands, such as easing Israel’s eight-year blockade on Gaza, but puts off debate on other thorny issues until later.
Amnesty International renewed an appeal for access to Gaza.
“Valuable time has already been lost and it is essential that human rights organisations are now able to begin the vital job of examining allegations of war crimes,” it said.
The Palestinians say agreement over a long-term arrangement in Gaza has been delayed by Israeli foot-dragging over key issues.
Israel wants Gaza demilitarised although the subject does not figure in the Egyptian proposal as seen by AFP.
Hamas had repeatedly warned it would not extend the temporary ceasefire, pressing for immediate gains that would allow it to claim concessions from Israel after the devastating war which began on July 8.
Abbas to visit Doha for talks
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will travel to Doha today and hold talks the next day with HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and Hamas leader Khalid Mishal, the Palestinian ambassador in Qatar said. Abbas will tomorrow discuss separately with HH Sheikh Tamim and Mishal latest developments in the negotiations in Cairo and “aid and reconstruction” in Gaza, Palestinian ambassador Monir Ghannam told AFP. From Doha, Abbas will travel on to Cairo as part of contacts the Palestinian leadership is staging “with all the parties concerned” in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Ghannam
said yesterday.
