OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Agencies)
Israel launched a new incursion into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday overshadowing a new peace push by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who was holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the time.
Israeli ground forces and Hamas militants clashed inside the Gaza Strip in the first raid of its kind since the five-day Israeli incursion that killed more than 120 Palestinians, 22 of them children, ended on Monday.
Palestinian witnesses and Hamas officials said a column of Israeli armored vehicles crossed the border in central Gaza and came under mortar and machinegun fire.
Israeli helicopters circled overhead as the soldiers surrounded the home of a militant. The Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad movement said the man was a leader of its armed wing.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed there was a military operation under way in Gaza but declined to give details.
The incursion came as Olmert held talks with Rice who had earlier called for Israel to be "very cognizant of the effects of its operations on innocent people".
Earlier, Rice had met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas who suspended all contacts with Israel on Sunday, and who responded to her call for a resumption of talks with a demand for a comprehensive ceasefire.
Abbas did not say when he might return to the negotiating table, but insisted that "the negotiations are necessary and we are committed to them."
The U.S. chief diplomat called on both Israel and the Palestinians to renew peace talks that were dealt a major blow by the deadly Israeli onslaught of the past week.
"We look forward to the resumption of negotiations as soon as possible," Rice said after meeting Abbas.
She said President George W. Bush's goal of resolving the decades-old conflict and inking a historic peace deal by the end of his term in January 2009 was still possible.
"I still believe that that can be done," she told reporters.
Bush, too, said after meeting Jordan's King Abdullah in Washington that he was still "optimistic" about the prospects for the peace talks, re-launched to great fanfare at a U.S. conference in November after a seven-year freeze.
The U.S. president urged the two sides to "step up" efforts to end the violence and reach a deal. |
