| last updated: Monday 12 January 2009, 06:50am |  Print this page |
Israel and Hamas vow to fight on in Gaza
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Israeli soldiers killed 10 Palestinian gunmen during clashes in the city of Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian medical officials said.
The location of the fighting, on the southwest side of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip's biggest population centre, suggested Israel was intensifying a more than two-week-old offensive.
Hamas's leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, said his Islamist group would not consider a truce until Israel ended its military offensive and lifted a blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israel sent tanks deeper into the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave and threatened to intensify its air and ground assaults against militants who fired more rockets into the Jewish state.
Palestinian witnesses reported heavy fighting east of the city of Gaza where Hamas militants fired anti-tank missiles and mortar bombs at advancing Israeli forces who responded with tank shells and air strikes.
Israeli shelling of two villages in south Gaza killed a woman and set 15 houses on fire, witnesses said.
A total of 858 Palestinians and 13 Israelis - three civilians killed by rocket fire and 10 soldiers - have been killed since the offensive began on December 27.
Israel is demanding a complete halt to Hamas rocket fire, plus regional and international guarantees to stop the group rearming via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt.
Hamas wants any ceasefire deal to include the ending of Israel's crippling economic blockade of the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the territory, from which the Jewish state withdrew in 2005 after a 38-year occupation
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