Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed yesterday to continue to hit Gaza after Palestinian militants carried out the first cross-border raid into Israel in nearly a year.
"Our operations in Gaza will continue as long as the rocket fire and the terror attacks continue," Olmert said at the opening of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Olmert did not say if Israeli military strikes in Gaza would increase, after militants drove to a border fence in a jeep, breached it and attacked an army post on the other side.
The post was unmanned at the time, but exchanges of fire with troops sent to the scene left one militant dead while three others made it back inside Gaza. The army did not report any casualties.
The raid near the Kissufim crossing was carried out jointly by the radical Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group loosely linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party.
It marked the first cross-border raid since an operation on June 25 last year in which militants tunneled out of Gaza and attacked an army post, killing two soldiers and seizing a third, Corporal Gilad Shalit, who remains in captivity.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the latest raid was also aimed at capturing a soldier while Olmert called it an attempt to "further complicate the situation."
"The central objective of the terrorist organizations was to hit Israel, to carry out a kidnapping and in this way to put us into difficulties," Peretz told public radio.
Olmert and the Palestinian journalist union condemned the groups' use of a white jeep with "TV" insignia, a photo of which was published in an Israeli daily. On Saturday the groups said the jeep used was camouflaged as an army vehicle.
"Yesterday terrorists used a car with TV insignia in order to confuse the soldiers and take advantage of our special sensitivity as a democratic country to allow the media to work in these sensitive areas," Olmert said.
In a statement in Gaza, the Palestinian journalists union said: "Using a car with press insignia puts in danger journalists' lives and gives an excuse to occupation forces to target and kill journalists."
"We demand that everyone stop using such methods or the word `press' for all actions that don't have anything to do with journalism," it said.
Israel's foreign press association also blasted the use of the jeep as "a grave development" and condemned "those that carried it out."
Israel carried out an air raid early yesterday against Islamic Jihad offices in Gaza City wounding two people, medics said.
Israel has been pounding militant targets in Gaza since May 16, when it resumed raids after a six-month ceasefire in response to a sharp increase in rocket fire from the territory.
Meanwhile, Hamas and Fatah agreed early yesterday to a new truce with the help of Egyptian mediators following clashes near the southern town of Rafah that left a civilian and a militant dead and 40 others wounded.
Taiwanese Olympic badminton men’s doubles gold medalist Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) and his new partner, Chiu Hsiang-chieh (邱相榤), clinched the men’s doubles title at the Yonex Taipei Open yesterday, becoming the second Taiwanese team to win a title in the tournament. Ranked 19th in the world, the Taiwanese duo defeated Kang Min-hyuk and Ki Dong-ju of South Korea 21-18, 21-15 in a pulsating 43-minute final to clinch their first doubles title after teaming up last year. Wang, the men’s doubles gold medalist at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, partnered with Chiu in August last year after the retirement of his teammate Lee Yang
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
RSS