ISRAEL/GAZA: Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu visits rocket battered cities, more tanks massed on border area

Record ID: 340331

  • Title: ISRAEL/GAZA: Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu visits rocket battered cities, more tanks massed on border area
  • Date: 1st January 2009
  • Summary: ASHDOD, ISRAEL (DECEMBER 31, 2008) (REUTERS) NETANYAHU VISITING BUS STATION WHERE ISRAELI WOMAN WAS KILLED BY ROCKET FIRED FROM GAZA NETANYAHU LOOKING AT FLOWERS LAID AT BUS STOP WHERE WOMAN WAS KILLED MORE OF NETANYAHU AT SITE
  • Embargoed: 16th January 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA6K81Z9M33MEBUY61YKV2CITGM
  • Story Text: Israel's opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu toured the rocket battered southern region on Wednesday (December 31) as cross border violence between the Jewish state and Palestinian militants in Gaza continued.
    A fresh barrage of rockets launched from Gaza hit the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon shortly before Netanyahu arrived there.
    "Approximately few minutes ago one Grad rocket slammed into middle Ashkelon, inside a neighbourhood. As a result a number of people were treated for shock, at the moment the bomb disposal experts on the site, you can see the damage behind us both on the walls as well as the vehicles, luckily no one was killed here at the scene," said Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld at the site where police sappers were still working to neutralise the rocket.
    Damage was caused to buildings and vehicles but no injuries were reported.
    Netanyahu, visiting the town where an Israeli was killed by a Palestinian rocket on Sunday (December 28), met with local children and visited wounded in hospital.
    "This is a new kind of terror. Once they used to send bombs with suiciders, now they send rockets with bombs into the heart of cities. They are holding now over a million people under terror and let no one make a mistake: this bombs are killing and wounding but above all they put hundreds of thousands of people under a regime of terror," Netanyahu said.
    The cross border violence between Israel and Gaza intensified with Israeli air raid on the coastal enclave on Saturday (December 27) and has claimed the lives of 393 Palestinians and four Israelis.
    "What would you do if your city, your home, your neighbourhood was targeted by thousands of rockets? I think most countries would actually do more than what Israel is doing. The only other example we have of a democracy attacked in this way is Britain in WWII. They had about an equal number of rockets falling on London and British cities, and what the British government did in WWII was to flatten half of Germany. Well, we're not doing that, we're not using a fraction of our power but we have every right, the right of self defence, to try to target the terrorists," Netanyahu said in Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon.
    Israeli leaders flocked to cities in southern Israel to show solidarity with residents under threat from Hamas's long-range rockets.
    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert huddled with his security cabinet to review their options, both military and diplomatic, including Paris's proposal for a 48-hour truce that would allow in more humanitarian aid for Gaza's 1.5 million residents.
    But along the heavily-fortified border fence, Israeli tank crews prepared for battle while Islamists militants, hiding as little as a few hundred yards (meters) away, laid land mines and other booby traps should a ground war break out.
    Israeli aircraft carried out only two strikes in the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, targeting smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt frontier and Hamas government offices in Gaza City, an Israeli military spokesman said.
    Palestinian medical officials said one person, a paramedic, was killed.
    Medical officials in Gaza put Palestinian casualties at 393 dead and more than 800 wounded since the Israeli offensive began on Saturday.
    A United Nations agency said at least 25 percent of those killed were civilians.
    Four Israelis were killed by rocket fire fired by militants in Gaza.
    Foreign powers have increased pressure on both sides to halt hostilities, but public anger in Israel over the widening of the rocket attacks to include Beersheba, 40 km (24 miles) from the Gaza Strip, could move the government to hit Hamas even harder.
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