- Title: GAZA/ISRAEL: Violence threatens Gaza truce as Obama envoy visits
- Date: 29th January 2009
- Summary: WOUNDED YOUTH BEING TREATED IN HOSPITAL VARIOUS OF WOUNDED CHILD BEING TREATED IN HOSPITAL
- Embargoed: 13th February 2009 12:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: International Relations
- Reuters ID: LVA79N8XUB5AP816JUC4087GHZ3J
- Story Text: Israel strikes southern Gaza in fresh violence which threatens U.S. efforts to consolidate a long lasting truce in the coastal territory, as U.S. peace envoy meets Israeli army Chief of Staff before meetings with Palestinian leadership.
A Gaza ceasefire came closer to unravelling on Thursday (January 29) despite efforts by U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy to reinforce the fragile truce.
In southern Gaza, an Israeli air strike in the town of Khan Younis wounded two Palestinian militants and 10 school children, Palestinian medical workers said.
Dozens of Khan Younis residents gathered in the street around a burnt motorcycle and a damaged car which were hit by the strike, as firemen were splashing water around the area.
After the strike, wounded people were brought by ambulance to 'Nasr' hospital in Khan Younis, where they were treated by medics.
An Israeli military spokesman said the air strike targeted Mahmoud Uda Hamdan Samiri, formerly a member of Hamas and currently "an operative of global Jihad".
He said Samiri was part of a squad responsible for Tuesday's (January 27) bombing that killed an Israeli warrant officer and wounded three other soldiers on a patrol along Israel-Gaza border. He also took part in the detonation of explosives that killed two Israeli soldiers in March 2008, the spokesman said.
The Israeli attack came after Palestinian militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip fired two rockets into Israel -- the first since the January 18 ceasefire. No one was hurt.
Israeli aircraft then struck in the southern Gaza Strip, attacking a metal workshop that the military called a weapons factory, causing no casualties.
The surge of violence over the past two days threatened to reignite a war that Israel launched on December 27 with the declared aim of ending cross-border rocket fire.
Also on Thursday, Former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, Obama's envoy to the Middle East, met with Israeli Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, at the Israeli Defence Ministry headquarters in the coastal city of Tel Aviv.
Later, Mitchell planned to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank following talks on Wednesday in Egypt, which has been trying to broker a long-term truce in Israel-Gaza border.
Mitchell, repeating Obama's call for a return to peace talks, said it was "of critical importance that the Gaza ceasefire be extended and consolidated". - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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