The BBC said on Thursday it has been assured by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that its Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, kidnapped a month ago, is ”safe and well”, and again appealed for his release. There has been no word on the fate of Johnston (44) since he was forced from his car at gunpoint exactly one month ago.
A landmark coalition government uniting rival factions took power on Saturday, vowing to end a year-long international boycott that has crippled the economy of the Palestinian territories. The new government unites the secular Fatah party with the Islamist Hamas movement.
No image available
/ 21 December 2006
A fragile ceasefire aimed at halting deadly clashes between rival Palestinian factions held in Gaza for a second day on Thursday as President Mahmoud Abbas urged all sides to consolidate the truce. No clashes between Abbas’s Fatah party and the ruling Hamas movement have been reported since early on Wednesday.
Israel pressed on with its air assault on Gaza on Friday in a bid to retrieve a soldier abducted nearly three weeks ago and stop rocket attacks but troops withdrew from the centre of the territory. The continued offensive came as the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution calling on Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza.
Israel battered the Gaza Strip with fresh air strikes on Tuesday as troops stood poised to launch more incursions in a deadly offensive that has killed more than 50 Palestinians in a week. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended the operation, aimed at securing the release of an abducted teenage soldier and halting rocket attacks.
Five Palestinians were killed on Friday as Israel pressed on with its bloody offensive in Gaza, a day after reoccupying land in the deadliest 24 hours in the Palestinian territories for four years. Twenty-seven Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since the offensive began late on Wednesday.
Israel struck at the heart of the Palestinian government on Sunday, hitting the Gaza office of the Hamas prime minister in a new wave of night-time air raids, ratcheting up the pressure to rescue an Israeli soldier captured by militants a week ago. Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, who was not in his office at the time, condemned the attack, which set his office ablaze.
Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza for a second straight night as Palestinian militants holding an army corporal issued new demands on Saturday for the release of prisoners from Israeli jails. The regional fallout of the crisis also deepened, with Washington backing its key ally in holding arch foe Syria at least partially responsible for the escalation.
Deadly factional violence and the storming of Parliament by protesters on Wednesday threatened to overshadow a new round of cross-party Palestinian talks seeking to cap tensions between Fatah and Hamas. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, leader of the Hamas-led government, in Gaza City.
Two Hamas militants trying to fire rockets into Israel were killed in air strikes on Sunday, as the ruling Islamists fought Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s referendum on coexistence with Israel. A third Palestinian militant from the Islamic Jihad faction was also killed while preparing a rocket attack.