The New Nation - Internet Edition

Defiant Israel presses Gaza offensive as toll passes 800

AFP, Gaza City

Tanks and warplanes pounded Gaza on Friday after Israel defied a truce order from the UN Security Council as the death toll from the two-week-old conflict against Hamas passed 800.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not bow to "outside influence" as its aircraft carried out scores of bombings and the army's tanks shelled several locations despite an announced three-hour "humanitarian" lull.

Hamas meanwhile said it would not accept any ceasefire with Israel that did not see the lifting of a crippling blockade of the impoverished territory enacted when the Islamist movement seized power in Gaza in June 2007.

The humanitarian impact of Operation Cast Lead was also becoming more acute with the UN warning that families were going hungry as food supplies dry up.

Pressure on the two sides increased with an overnight security council resolution which demanded an "immediate, durable" ceasefire leading to the "full withdrawal" of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Fourteen of the 15 council members voted in favour. The United States, Israel's main ally, abstained but refrained from vetoing the resolution agreed after lengthy negotiations between Arab and Western foreign ministers.

Israel however dismissed the resolution, saying it could not agree to it in the face of continuing rocket attacks.

Israel launched its war against the Islamists on December 27 aiming to end rocket attacks in southern Israel and the smuggling of weapons into Gaza through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

"Israel has never agreed for any outside influence to decide on its right to defend its citizens," Olmert said in a statement before the country's powerful security council agreed to press ahead with the offensive.

Mussa Abu Marzuk, the Damascus-based deputy head of the powerful Hamas politburo, said Hamas would reject any ceasefire that did not lift the blockade.

"There will be no acceptance of any (proposal) that does not call for an end to the blockade and the opening of the border crossings," he told AFP.

"Hamas has no comments on the (UN) resolution, because it has not been asked to accept or reject it."

Since early on Friday, Israel staged around 100 strikes on Gaza, which Gaza medics said had killed over 30 people, nearly half of them civilians. The army had arrested some 300 Palestinians in the north of the strip, witnesses said.

Hamas and its allies fired more than 30 rockets into southern Israel, injuring one person, the military said. At least four Grad rockets hit Beersheva, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Gaza.

Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza's emergency services, said at least 800 people are now known to have been killed since December 27 and another 3,330 wounded. The dead include at least 230 children and 92 women.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or rocket attacks into Israel over the same period.

The violence on the ground has prompted the United Nations' main aid agency in Gaza, UNRWA, to halt to all its operations, raising fears the territory's beleaguered 1.5 million population will soon go hungry.

"The need on the ground is dire," a spokeswoman for the UN's World Food Programme told AFP from Egypt's Rafah border crossing with Gaza, one of the crossings through which aid has passed since the conflict began.

"Eighty percent of the population is in need right now, maybe even beyond that," said Nancy Ronan. "We got food into Gaza, but we now have a problem distributing it because of the security situation."

The White House expressed concern about the humanitarian situation in the narrow coastal strip but blamed Hamas for the bloodshed.

And US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said protecting civilians was "very difficult in circumstances like Gaza, which is a very densely populated area."

She said the United States had abstained in the UN vote in order to allow Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's ceasefire initiative to "mature."

Mubarak, who has proposed a three-point plan for a ceasefire that has been backed by Washington, was due to hold separate talks with Abbas and a Hamas delegation, including members from Gaza, on Saturday.

His plan calls for for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, urgent meetings with Palestinian and Israeli officials and the resumption of Palestinian reconciliation talks.

Arab anger at the conflict meanwhile intensified, with more than 50,000 Egyptians rallying after Muslim prayers in the northern city of Alexandria.

Other protests held in Amman, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Baghdad, Algiers, and several European capitals.

A rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah turned into a display of the deep divisions among Palestinians, with fist fights breaking out between supporters of Hamas and Abbas's rival Fatah faction.

Sri Lanka army ready for 'decisive blow' on Tigers after capturing pass

AFP, Colombo

Sri Lankan security forces were ready to deal a "decisive blow" to the remaining Tamil Tiger positions following the capture of the highly strategic Elephant Pass, the defence ministry said on Saturday.

After four days of fierce fighting, government forces on Friday established full control over Elephant Pass, also known as EPS, which links the Jaffna peninsula with the rest of the mainland. "The fall of EPS has deprived the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the most crucial strategic ground, at the 'Jaffna gateway', following an eight year occupation," the ministry said.

"Troops are now poised at launching a decisive blow at the remaining LTTE strong points at Mulliyan, Chempiyanpattu, Chundikulam and Kaddaikadu." The ministry had already announced that the rebels were facing near "extinction" after security forces captured their main political headquarters of Kilinochchi last week following an offensive begun in March 2007.

"The end-game of LTTE's protracted separatist cause is reaching its final stages, as the advancing security forces overran the most fortified LTTE northern garrison at EPS," the ministry said.

The Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting since 1972 for a separate homeland, had held the pass since April 2000, and its loss is another huge blow to the separatists after the fall of Kilinochchi last week.

"Our forces have recorded another historic victory today," President Mahinda Rajapakse said in a televised address to the nation on Friday.

"That is the complete dislodging of the Tigers from Elephant Pass and the security forces establishing their authority there," he said.

The military now controls a 142-kilometre (88-mile) stretch of the important A-9 highway and can supply troops and nearly half a million civilians in Jaffna by road, the president said.

There was no comment from the LTTE.

Government forces were also moving towards the remaining jungle hideouts of the Tigers in the northeastern district of Mullaittivu amid rebel resistance, the army said.

The rebels are now almost totally confined to the jungle district of Mullaittivu in the northeast, where some 300,000 civilians are also living.

17 Afghan civilians killed in US raid: Karzai's office: Blasts kill 3 US soldiers, 6 Afghans

AFP, Kabul

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said Thursday that reports suggested 17 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a US raid in eastern Afghanistan this week.

The US military, however, reiterated that only 32 insurgents were killed in the operation Tuesday in Laghman province, east of the capital Kabul. The provincial government said it had sent a team to the area to investigate.

"Seventeen civilians, women and children among them, were killed in an attack launched by coalition forces on a Taliban hideout in the Alishing district of Laghman province, reports suggest," Karzai's office said. An official told AFP separately that the statement referred to intelligence reports received by the government.

Karzai condemned the killings and also the "using of civilians as human shields by the terrorists", his office said in a statement.

Civilian casualties in operations by international troops have been a source of tension between foreign forces and Karzai, who says such incidents threaten support for the fight against extremists.

Meanwhile, a bomb tore through a military patrol in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing three US troops, while a suicide attack at a fruit market killed six Afghans, authorities said. The blasts came as the country braced for another tough year against an insurgency led by the extremist Taliban but which also sees attacks by other radical factions and groups linked.

to the massive opium and heroin trade.

The bombing of the patrol from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force took to 10 the number of foreign troops killed here so far this year. Two US troops were killed in a Taliban suicide attack Thursday.

"They were on a mounted patrol where they hit an IED (improvised explosive device)," said US military spokesman Colonel Jerry O'Hara.

"Three US soldiers were killed and one was wounded."

The blast occurred along Highway One, an often-attacked road linking the volatile south with the capital Kabul.

All of the other soldiers to die in Afghanistan this year-Australian, British, Canadian and US nationals-were also killed in the south, where insurgents hold sway in several districts.

In another attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a fruit market in the small southwestern town of Zaranj on the border with Iran, police said.

Ban Ki-moon disappointed by Israeli defiance of Gaza truce call

AFP, United Nations

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Friday to express disappointment over the Jewish state's defiance of a Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, his spokeswoman said.

"The Secretary General spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by phone this afternoon and expressed his disappointment that the violence is continuing on the ground in disregard of yesterday's Security Council resolution," Michele Montas said.

Late Thursday the 15-member UN Security Council voted overwhelmingly to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza leading to a withdrawal of Israeli troops who have been pressing a two-week-old military offensive to stop rocket firing by Palestinian militants. The United States, Israel's main ally, abstained.

The Israeli military onslaught has left at least 800 Palestinians dead.

Both Israel and Hamas brushed off Resolution 1860 as Israel bombed and shelled Gaza for a 14th day Friday and Palestinian militants continued firing rockets.

Olmert was quoted as saying Friday that Israel would keep up its offensive in Gaza despite the council's truce call.

"Israel has never agreed for any outside influence to decide on its right to defend its citizens," a statement from Olmert's office quoted him as saying.

"The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will continue to operate in order to defend the citizens of Israel and will carry out the task it was given for the operation."

Montas said Ban "is obviously concerned that the violence is continuing despite yesterday's resolution and hopes it will come to a stop very soon."

"The (Security) Council has clearly said what should happen and the parties should comply. There needs to be an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza," the spokeswoman quoted the UN chief as saying.

"There should be an immediate halt of violence, including both the Israeli military operations and the firing of rockets by Palestinian militant groups," she added in a statement.

Montas further stated that Ban was continuing his contacts with political leaders in the region and the international community "in hopes of ensuring that Resolution 1860 is implemented without delay."

The UN chief urged all states, especially those in the region, to encourage progress in this regard.

Illinois House impeaches governor Blagojevich

AP, Springfield

Gov. Rod Blagojevich was impeached Friday by Illinois lawmakers furious that he turned state government into a "freak show," setting the stage for an unprecedented trial in the state Senate that could get him thrown out of office. The 114-1 vote in the Illinois House came exactly a month after Blagojevich's arrest on charges that included trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. The debate took less than 90 minutes, and not a single legislator rose in defense of the governor, who was jogging in the snow in Chicago.Later, a defiant Blagojevich insisted again that he committed no crime, and declared: "I'm going to fight every step of the way." He portrayed himself as a victim of political payback by the House for his efforts to extend health care and other relief to the ordinary people of Illinois. "The causes of the impeachment are because I've done things to fight for families," the 52-year-old Democrat said at a news conference where he surrounded himself with people that spokesman Lucio Guerrero said had benefited from the state's expanded health care program.

including a man in a wheelchair and a kidney transplant recipient. He took no questions.

Blagojevich becomes the first U.S. governor in more than 20 years to be impeached. Arizona's Evan Mecham was impeached, convicted and removed from office in 1988 for trying to thwart an investigation into a death threat allegedly made by an aide.

No other Illinois governor has ever been impeached, despite the state's storied history of graft. Blagojevich's immediate predecessor, George Ryan, is behind bars for corruption, and two earlier governors also went to prison.

The Senate trial is set to begin Jan. 26. While impeachment in the House required only a simple majority, or 60 votes, a two-thirds vote would be needed for conviction in the 59-member Senate.

During the House debate, lawmakers complained that Blagojevich had made a laughingstock out of the state.

"It's our duty to clean up the mess and stop the freak show that's become Illinois government," said Democratic Rep. Jack Franks.

Rep. Monique Davis, a Democrat, said: "If the governor walked down that aisle today, how many of us would fall over ourselves to greet him? I think we'd hold our heads down in shame. We wanted him, we elected him, we supported him, and he's disgraced us."