Palestinian Death Toll Tops 900: Gaza Official
Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters
Gaza - Israeli troops fought gun battles with Hamas fighters on Monday, keeping military pressure on the Islamist group while avoiding all-out urban warfare that would complicate ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the Gaza war.
Egyptians attend a candlelight vigil in Cairo, Egypt, supporting the Palestinians in Gaza. (Photo: Ben Curtis / AP)
Medical officials said the Palestinian death toll in the offensive Israel began 17 days ago had risen past 900 and included at least 380 civilians. Israel says three Israeli civilians, hit by Hamas rockets, and 10 soldiers have died.
Along battle lines in the suburbs of the rubble-strewn city of Gaza, Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants engaged in more fierce fighting.
Residents and local journalists said Israeli troops and tanks had taken up positions in open areas, seeking to penetrate guerrilla defenses in built-up zones that included booby-traps, snipers and fighters with rocket-propelled grenades.
Among targets hit by air strikes were the homes of more Hamas leaders, which Israel said contained weapons stores.
But Israeli forces were still holding back from a threatened third stage of their deadliest assault on Palestinian militants in decades - a push into the city of Gaza and other urban areas to add more punch to an air campaign and ground offensive.
At a Washington news conference, U.S. President George Bush said in reply to a question that he hoped the violence would end before he handed over to Barack Obama on January 20.
"I'm for a sustainable ceasefire, and a definition of sustainable ceasefire is Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel," Bush said. "I happen to believe the choice is Hamas's to make."
He said Israel had a right to defend itself but should be mindful of "innocent folks" in the Gaza Strip.
Israel launched its campaign with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket salvoes and has drawn international criticism over the Palestinian civilian casualties.
Egypt has been trying broker a ceasefire, which Israel said must ensure that Hamas cannot rearm. Hamas wants Israel to end its air, sea and ground assault and lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip, territory the group seized in 2007.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a candidate for prime minister in a February 10 election, said the surprise bombing of the Gaza Strip at the start of operations on December 27 and an armored thrust a week later "restored Israel's deterrence."
Morning radio programs in Israel, however, continued to be interrupted by announcements of "Color Red" alerts, heralding rocket attacks on towns where residents have only seconds to find shelter before salvoes hit. Ten rockets landed in the first half of the day, the army said. No one was hurt.
The Israeli military said its aircraft carried out more than 25 attacks, fewer than on many previous days.
Medical workers said Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, including at least five civilians, in Monday's violence.
Political Decisions
In an interview on Israeli Army Radio, Livni gave no indication when the assaults might end.
Political sources said Livni, chairman of the ruling Kadima party, and her main coalition partner Defence Minister Ehud Barak, head of center-left Labour, wanted to halt the operation in the Hamas-ruled territory as soon as possible.
But the sources said outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who resigned as Kadima chief in September, disagreed and planned to present the issue in a cabinet forum where he has support.
The Palestinian death toll since Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" began stood at 909, Gaza medical officials said. About 3,600 Palestinians have been wounded.
The health minister in the Hamas-run government in Gaza, Bassem Naeem, told reporters that 42 percent of those killed - or close to 400 - were women and children. Israel, which says it has killed "hundreds" of fighters, has questioned civilian casualty figures from Gaza but has not offered its own estimate.
Reuters journalists covering sites of attacks and hospital facilities have seen dozens of bodies of women and children. Israel has accused Hamas, operating in densely populated areas, of using civilians as human shields.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan said delegates who held talks in Cairo on Sunday on a ceasefire had returned to Damascus for consultations with the group's leadership and to formulate a final position on the Egyptian initiative.
Israel, which rejected a U.N. ceasefire resolution last week as unworkable, wants a halt to rocket attacks and measures to stop Hamas from rearming via the tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, in an area known as the Philadelphi corridor.
Western and Israeli officials said diplomats were discussing an internationally-assisted technical monitoring system to help Egypt stop weapons smuggling and intercept rocket shipments.
Egypt, concerned for its sovereignty, opposes stationing an international force on its side of the frontier.
International Middle East envoy Tony Blair said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt on Monday that "the elements of an agreement of the immediate ceasefire are there and are now being worked on very hard in great detail."
"This is a sensitive and delicate time in the negotiation but I hope they will bear fruit and I hope so soon. I hope we can achieve it (the ceasefire) within the coming days," Blair told reporters.
Israeli warplanes have repeatedly bombed the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza's 14-km (nine-mile) border with Egypt, sometimes using "bunker buster" munitions that explode underground and cause shockwaves to try to collapse the tunnels.
Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a ground operation to retake the corridor and parts of the town of Rafah as one of Israel's leading "third phase" options if talks over a ceasefire founder.
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(Additional reporting by Adam Entous and Joseph Nasr in Jerusalem and Wafa Amr in Ramallah and Alaa Shahine in Cairo; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Samia Nakhoul)