Israel attacks Palestinian Foreign Ministry

Gaza, Jul 13: An Israeli air strike destroyed the office of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar today in an attack that signalled Israel would pursue its Gaza offensive while fighting along a second front in Lebanon.

No one was hurt in the night-time raid on the Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City, Palestinian security officials said.

A separate air strike, near Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, killed an Islamic Jihad militant and wounded another gunman, the officials said.

Israel killed at least 24 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip yesterday, including nine members of one family in an air strike that destroyed a house where the army said senior Hamas commanders were meeting.

''This is state terrorism against the Palestinian people,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Taher al-Nunu said about the attack on the ministry building.

Captain Noa Meir, an Israeli army spokeswoman, described Zahar as ''one of the most extremist leaders of Hamas'' but said the attack had not been aimed at killing him.

Hamas, an Islamist militant organisation that came to power in the Palestinian territories after a January election, is dedicated to Israel's destruction.

Witnesses said the attack set off a fire in the Foreign Ministry and destroyed Zahar's office. He was not in the building at the time.

The air strike was part of an offensive Israel launched in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago after militants operating from the territory, which Israeli troops and settlers quit last year, abducted a soldier in a raid into the Jewish state.

Yesterday's death toll, which rose to 24 after a wounded Palestinian died in hospital, included at least 14 civilians.

It was the highest number of Palestinians killed in a single day since Israeli armour and infantry moved into the Gaza Strip on June 28 to force militants to free the soldier and halt cross-border rocket fire.

NORTHERN FRONT

Israel also went on the offensive yesterday on its border with Lebanon, where Hizbollah guerrillas captured two soldiers and killed eight other troops.

Dozens of Israeli air strikes hit a dozen bridges and suspected Hizbollah posts, killing two Lebanese civilians and a Hizbollah fighter as well as disrupting fixed-line communications between Beirut and south Lebanon.

Bombardment by land and sea added devastation to south Lebanon's road network. The Israeli army pulled out of the area in 2000, 22 years after it moved in to fight Palestinian guerrillas who controlled a border strip.

A statement issued by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet after an emergency meeting last night said that Israel held the Lebanese government responsible for the attacks and for the safe return of the seized soldiers.

But it offered no details about what type of action would be taken.

REUTERS

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