Israeli air strikes wound 19 in Gaza Strip
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Nidal al-Mughrabi - March 21, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel launched air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Monday, wounding at least 19 people, after militants fired mortar shells and rockets into the Jewish state, witnesses and militant groups said. The number of raids and casualties in one evening showed the rising tension between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. Hamas has stepped up rocket salvoes into Israel after a hiatus since the two sides fought a war two years ago, claiming responsibility for firing more than two dozen mortar shells and rockets at the weekend.

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Mortar Fire From Hamas, and Israeli Tanks Respond
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - March 19, 2011 - 12:00am

Hamas militants fired dozens of mortar shells from Gaza into southern Israel during a 15-minute period on Saturday morning, slightly injuring two Israeli civilians and sharply escalating tensions along the Israel-Gaza border. The Israeli military responded to the unusually intense barrage with tank and helicopter fire. Gaza officials reported that five Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire directed at a Hamas security facility east of Gaza City, including three security officers and two civilians, one of them a child.

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Hamas fires dozens of mortars at Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Ian Deitch - March 19, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestinian militants in Gaza fired more than 50 mortar shells into Israel on Saturday, the heaviest barrage in two years, Israeli officials said, raising the prospect of a new Mideast flareup. Also Saturday, Hamas police beat reporters and news photographers covering a rally in Gaza City, drawing a stiff condemnation from the reporters' association.

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Israeli strike kills two Hamas security men
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Allyn Fisher-Ilan - March 16, 2011 - 12:00am

Israeli warplanes fired two missiles at a security compound in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing two Palestinian militants, Hamas and Palestinian medical officials said. The Israeli military confirmed it had struck a militant target in the coastal territory in response to a rocket fired at Israel earlier, which caused no casualties. Hamas officials and medics said both men killed were security guards at the compound. Hamas's armed wing said both were members of it.

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Witnesses: Airstrike targets central Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
March 4, 2011 - 1:00am

sraeli warplanes struck a car in central Gaza Friday morning causing no injuries, witnesses said. Locals said Israeli fighter jets fired two missiles near the An-Nuseirat refugee camp, destroying a jeep belonging to a resistance fighter. Many Israeli drones were hovering over Gaza at the time of the raid, residents said. An Israeli military spokeswoman was not immediately familiar with the attack.


PA: Israel assassination probe 'making excuses for murder'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 28, 2011 - 1:00am

The Palestinian Authority on Monday slammed an Israeli investigation which found the killing of 13 civilians in Gaza during an assassination was not a disciplinary offense. In July 2002, Israeli forces dropped a one-ton bomb on the Gaza City home of Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh, killing 13 civilians including his wife, daughter and eight other children. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed a committee of military generals to probe the killings after a rights group petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court demanding an investigation.

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Hamas accuses Israel of escalation as fragile ceasefire on edge of collapse
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
by Saud Abu Ramadan, Emad Drimly - February 28, 2011 - 1:00am

The deposed government of the Islamic Hamas movement, which rules the Gaza Strip, on Monday accused Israel of escalating violence against the Palestinians in the coastal enclave as an undeclared fragile ceasefire between military factions and Israel is about to collapse. Taher al-Nouno, spokesman for the Hamas government, told Xinhua that the current Israeli military escalation on the Gaza Strip "is part of the Zionist enemy's nature, where it expresses the internal crisis that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is passing through and the failure of the peace process."

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Israeli Panel Finds No Crime in 2002 Assassination
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - February 27, 2011 - 1:00am

Nearly nine years after an Israeli assassination of a Hamas leader in Gaza killed at least 13 civilians and led to widespread international condemnation, a government-appointed panel of inquiry concluded Sunday that the operation was flawed but that the consequences “did not stem from disregard or indifference to human lives.”

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Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Wound Man and Baby
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Ben Weyl - February 26, 2011 - 1:00am

Israeli warplanes bombed a half-dozen targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, wounding a 7-month-old girl and a Palestinian man, medics in the coastal territory said. An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that there were at least two airstrikes aimed at militant targets, saying they were in response to rocket and mortar attacks on Israel. Medics said one strike was carried out on a military post of Hamas, the Islamic militant group, in Rafah, which is on Gaza’s border with Egypt. In a home nearby, a baby was hit in the head by fragments, though medics said the injury was slight.

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Escalation with Gaza will likely be contained within a few days
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff - February 25, 2011 - 1:00am

The extraordinary tension along the border with the Gaza Strip, which included the unusual launching of a Grad-type Katyusha at Be'er Sheva on Wednesday, appears now to have been a minor incident and not some sort of strategic turning point.

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