MIDEAST: Israeli forces continue deployment on Gaza border / Palestinian militants fire rockets into Israel from Gaza

Record ID: 340982

  • Title: MIDEAST: Israeli forces continue deployment on Gaza border / Palestinian militants fire rockets into Israel from Gaza
  • Date: 15th November 2012
  • Summary: GAZA CITY, GAZA (NOVEMBER 15, 2012) (REUTERS) WIDE OF RESIDENTS GATHERING AROUND CAR BURIED BY MISSILE CLOSE UP OF EMERGENCY WORKERS DIGGING AIR STRIKES - SMOKE BILLOWING IN BACKGROUND AS RESCUE EFFORTS CONTINUE MAN DIGGING MAN BEING REMOVED FROM CAR CLOSE UP OF PEOPLE STANDING ON BURIED CAR VARIOUS OF BODY OF TAXI DRIVER BEING TAKEN TO MORGUE ON STRETCHER OFER MILITARY
  • Embargoed: 30th November 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Gaza, Israel, West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA1404TYILNBZTG35M52LH51VGM
  • Story Text: Israeli soldiers continued to mass near the border with Gaza on Thursday (November 15), as air strikes pounded the besieged enclave. Despite the concentrated Israeli assault, Palestinian militants continued to launch rockets into Israel.
    Dozens of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and soldiers prepared for a possible ground assault into the coastal enclave.
    Medical workers and residents of Gaza City braved the Israeli air campaign to rescue a taxi driver, buried under sand when an air strike struck near his car. The driver was eventually freed from the wreckage, but was pronounced dead at hospital.
    On the outskirts of Ramallah, Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli soldiers at the entrance to Ofer Military Camp. The West Bank residents threw stones at the soldiers, who replied with multiple rounds of tear gas.
    Earlier in the morning, a Hamas rocket killed three Israelis north of the Gaza Strip, drawing the first blood from Israel as the Palestinian death toll rose to 15 and a military showdown lurched closer to all-out war with an invasion of the enclave.
    Palestinian allies led by Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi denounced the Israeli offensive, which racked up tensions and deepened the unpredictable crisis gripping a region convulsed by a year of revolution and an out-of-control civil war in Syria.
    After watching powerlessly from the sidelines of the Arab Spring, Israel was suddenly thrust to the centre of a volatile new world in which Islamist Hamas believes that Islamist Mursi and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood will be its "safety net".
    On the second day of an assault Israel said might last many days and culminate in a ground attack, its warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza city, where tall buildings trembled.
    Plumes of smoke and dust furled into a sky laced with the vapour trails of outgoing rockets.
    The Palestinian Islamist group claimed it had fired a one-tonne, Iranian-made Fajr 5 rocket at Tel Aviv in what would be a major escalation, but there was no reported impact in the Israeli metropolis 50 km (30 miles) north of the enclave.
    The offensive began on Wednesday (November 15) when a precision Israeli airstrike assassinated Hamas military mastermind Ahmed Al-Jaabari, and Israel shelled the enclave from land, air and sea.
    The 15 killed in Gaza included Jaabari and six Hamas fighters plus eight civilians, among them a pregnant woman with twins, an 11-month old boy and three infants, according to the enclave's health ministry. Medics reported at least 130 wounded.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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