BBC: Seven killed in Gaza air strikes

[Ghost Dog]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5240746.stm
3 August 2006, 09:41 GMT

At least seven people, including a child, have been killed in an Israeli operation in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials have said. Witnesses said about 50 tanks, backed by bulldozers, pushed further into Gaza, taking up positions near Rafah. The Israeli military said it carried out air strikes on militant targets, including a group which it said was trying to launch an anti-tank rocket.

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In the latest Israeli air and artillery strikes, most of those killed were Palestinian militants, Palestinian sources said. A young boy was among those killed and 26 people were injured, several critically. Some reports suggested one other civilian was among the dead. The UN says 35 children have been killed during Israeli operations in Gaza in the past month.

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More than 140 Palestinians, many civilians, have been killed since Israel's Gaza operations began.

On Wednesday UN officials renewed warnings of a humanitarian crisis in the territory, which is suffering food, water and electricity shortages as well as repeated Israeli incursions, air strikes and shelling.

Israel says it needs to target civilian areas because that is where Palestinian militants, who regularly fire rockets into Israel, are based.

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See also:

Gaza 'crisis as bad as Lebanon'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5240424.stm
By Lucy Williamson
BBC News, Gaza - 2 August 2006, 19:49 GMT

Palestinians inspect bomb damage after Israeli raid on Gaza City on 30 July
Israeli air attacks occur several a nights a week in Gaza
The United Nations has called on world leaders not to forget the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying it is at least as serious as that in southern Lebanon.

More than 140 people have been killed during Israel's operations there over the past month, many of them civilians.

Delivery of food and other essential items has been reduced to a trickle.

Thirty aid agencies backed the appeal, and one charity spoke of a sense among aid agencies that Gaza's population was being terrorised.

Care International told the BBC that Western nations had failed to put pressure on Israel to rein in its actions and that attention was being focused on Lebanon at the expense of the situation in the Gaza Strip.

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