A boy sits next to the body of 6-month-old Palestinian baby Mohammed al-Borai in a mosque before his funeral in Gaza

GAZA CITY  — Israel pounded the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Thursday, February 28, killing four children and 10 militants, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to make the Islamists pay a heavy price for rocket attacks.
The four children killed Thursday, aged eight, nine, 11 and 12, were killed while they played in a field in the northern city of Jabaliya, medics said. Another 12-year-old boy died of wounds sustained in a Gaza raid the previous day.

Twenty-eight Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed in two days of bloodshed, all but three of them in and around impoverished Gaza, where Israel has imposed a punishing collective blockade.

Among those killed were a six-month-old baby in Gaza and a man in southern Israel who became the first Israeli victim of a Gaza rocket attack in nine months.

A Hamas gunman was also killed in a strike near the house of Ismail Haniya, the premier in the Hamas-led government that Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas fired after the Islamists seized control of Gaza in June.

Speaking after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Tokyo, Olmert vowed to punish Hamas for the rocket attacks despite U.S. concerns about civilians in Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated places with a population of 1.5 million.

“We will make the terrorists pay a very heavy price,” Olmert told reporters. “We are at the height of this battle and we will pursue it until the danger threatening residents in the south ends.”

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that “a large-scale ground operation is being considered” while Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged the international community to accept such an operation.

“We don’t accept arguments that there are victims in both camps, as one cannot put Palestinian terrorism that targets innocent civilians on the same footing as those who combat it, even if civilians are killed unintentionally,” Livni said, even though an Israeli strike on Khan Yunis Wednesday caused the rocket attack that killed the Israeli.

Rice said earlier she told Olmert that she supported his determination to end the rocket attacks. “The issue is that the rocket attacks need to stop.”

She is due to visit the Middle East next week as part of Washington’s efforts to advance the peace process that was relaunched in late November but has made little progress since.

“There needs to be due concern for the innocent people and the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” Rice said.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees called on Israel “to abide by international law and exercise maximum restraint, and not to endanger civilians.”

“The killing of innocent children is always tragic and condemnable,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said.

Haniya blasted the “successive crimes committed by the Zionist occupation” and called on Arab countries to “stop their regrettable silence and act with urgency to stop the aggression.”

The Palestinian government based in the West Bank also denounced “abominable Israeli crimes” in Gaza.

The violence around Gaza flared early on Wednesday when an Israeli strike killed five Hamas militants in the southern town of Khan Yunis.

In retaliation, the Islamists launched a volley of rockets into southern Israel, killing a man at a university on the outskirts of the town of Sderot, the first Israeli killed by rocket fire from Gaza

At least 228 people, most of them Gaza militants, have been killed since the revival of peace talks three months ago.

The bloodshed comes as Israel’s U.S. ally steps up its diplomacy in the Middle East in hope of making progress before President George W. Bush leaves office in January.

On Thursday, Israeli troops also killed two militants in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, medics and security sources said.

On the Israeli side, two people were lightly wounded after Gaza militants fired more than 20 rockets and mortar rounds into the Jewish state, the army said.

Rice — who will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories early next month — said she still saw a “remarkable commitment” by Olmert and Abbas.

In his talks in Japan — a major donor to the Palestinians — Olmert pledged progress in the peace process, but cast doubt on whether the goal of striking a deal by the end of 2008 was realistic.

 

Compiled reports