The victims of the bombing came from the same family, medics say
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Israeli forces have carried out further raids on the Gaza Strip, killing three Palestinian civilians in an air strike. Militant group Islamic Jihad said the air strike was aimed at its men, but missed the target.
The Israeli military says its raids are to stop rocket attacks by militants. It said the civilians were killed by mistake and it is investigating.
The latest attack takes the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza to more than 20 in the past two days.
Medical workers said those killed on Wednesday afternoon were all from the same family and included a teenage boy.
Earlier, Israeli troops in the West Bank killed a senior figure in Islamic Jihad’s military wing.
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 Palestinian blood being spilt by [Israel] will be [Israel's] curse. It will not bring you security  Hamas leader Khaled Meshal
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Hamas, the radical Islamist group which is Gaza’s de facto ruler, said Israeli military actions in the last two days have scuppered a possible prisoner exchange between an Israeli soldier held by Hamas and Palestinians held by Israel.
Its Damascus-based leader in exile, Khaled Meshal, said it also jeopardised an informal ceasefire Hamas has adopted since 2005.
“I tell the… enemy: What you are committing will deprive you of anything you’re betting on. There will be no exchange involving Gilad Shalit, no calm or nothing of this sort,” Mr Meshal said at a news conference.
“Palestinian blood being spilt by you will be your curse. It will not bring you security. It will not prolong the existence of your entity,” he added.
Military leader
Earlier, Israeli troops killed Islamic Jihad commander Walid Obeidi during an exchange of fire in the West Bank village of Qabatiya, near the northern town of Jenin, officials and witnesses said.
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Two of his bodyguards were wounded and arrested, the group said.
The Israeli army said its troops had attempted to arrest Mr Obeidi, described as the head of the armed wing of the radical movement in the West Bank.
He refused to surrender and was killed in an exchange of fire, the military said.
The violence comes after Israeli and Palestinian Authority negotiators began talks on Monday on core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – borders, Jewish settlements, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinian Authority said Israel’s military action was a “slap in the face” to US President George W Bush, who visited the area last week to promote peace talks.
Hamas’s armed wing claimed responsibility for a heavy rocket barrage aimed at the Israeli town of Sderot on Wednesday, but there were no reports of injuries.
judy jafraty said,
January 17, 2008 at 8:45 pm
According to Webster’s New American Dictionary, 1959 Edition:
holocaust n. complete destruction by fire
Thomas J. Pennington III said,
January 17, 2008 at 9:07 pm
If that’s the definition, there was no Jewish Holocaust, ever.
DLH said,
January 17, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I was wondering when we would start to see the word ‘holocaust’ with a little ‘tm’ or a little ‘r’ or ‘c’ in a circle. The Jews own that word now. They also own the second world war now too in that it can’t be discussed, nor investigated, nor re-examined and perhaps updated as to do so is anti-semitic apparently. More non-Jews died in WWII than Jews. WWII, and EVERYTHING included in it, belongs to the people of the world who fought in it, to EVERYONE. Similarly the word holocaust is a word that could be attributed to many awful atrocities around the world both before and after WWII. Can we have it back please?
By saying that there weren’t six million deaths in the holocaust, does that make me a holocaust denier? Apparently so, even though I’m talking about Kosovo, Serbia, Rwanda, Palestine (define irony), Darfur, Eastern Timor, Ethiopia, Somalia, WWI – need I continue?
August said,
January 18, 2008 at 4:29 am
Well, a lot were burned to death.
John W. Addie said,
January 1, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I have been wondering for some time how to get Australians and other Wersterners to consider Muslims as people since our racist attitudes are so deeply ingrained for reasons of convenience ( we are mostly settler or colonialist peoples so it suits us to think of non-whites or non-Christians or non-Jews as non-peoples ). I remebered the early days of the anti-Vietnam war days when we ( the opponents of the war ) simply accused the Americans of committing atrocities and prposed send aid to the Viet Cong. This shifted the tenor of the debate. It is an ad hominem kind of argument but sometimes you have to resort to extreme measures to gget peeople to se things as they really are. I say let’s call the Zionists the new Nazis.
ryan said,
January 5, 2009 at 5:30 pm
John are muslims nazis too? They have killed countless numbers of people throughtout the centuries in their conquests of nations. They have raped, killed, and destroyed with the best(worst) of them.
Muslims are as inherently anti-Jewish as Christians are.Historically this is a fact. That doesn’t justify Israel’s actions by any means. I condemn Israel’s deplorable conduct in the harshest terms possible.
A for the Viet Cong and Vietnamese, they murdered tens of thousands. They to played a part in the destruction of their nation. DO not pretend that the Viet Cong and NVA were ‘freedom fighters” because they were not.
They were like Mao, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge, leftists who used the rubric of social change to murder many of their own people in order to cleanse the polity of bourgeosie capitalist sentiments.
The problem with palestinian apologizers is that none of you want Hamas, Hezbollah, or any of the extremists groups to take responsibility. None of you want to confront the uncomfortable fact that the raison d’ etre of these groups is to erase Israel off the map.
I don’t know where the author got 2 million palestinian deaths.The internet can present widely disparate numbers. I have seen a total of approximately 130,000. Still an abomination.
This conflict is the product of two millenia of oppression of a people and their determination not to allow it to happen again by preservation of their “homeland”. This resolve has caused them to become like their oppressors. They are now the concentration camp guard, the SS soldier, and the trenchoen wielding SA man.
The palestinians are not the innocents that the European Jews were, but that does not mitigate their suffering or alter the fact that Israel’s approach to the issue is terrible misguided.