Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah spoke by telephone with Hamas' exiled leader in a new bid to end Gaza's factional fighting, as Israeli missiles hit two suspected Hamas rocket workshops yesterday.
Also yesterday, gunmen clashed near Gaza City's Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold, and two Fatah fighters were injured. In northern Gaza, where Israeli tanks patrol the edge of the coastal strip to push back rocket squads, one man was wounded by tank fire, hospital officials said.
The weeklong Hamas-Fatah fighting has killed more than 50 Palestinians and wounded dozens, while the death toll from several days of Israeli airstrikes on Hamas command centers has reached 20.
Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the most senior Hamas politician in Gaza, have failed to make a ceasefire stick, suggesting that they have largely lost control to gunmen and their political patrons.
Abbas spoke late on Friday to the supreme leader of Hamas, Damascus-based Khaled Mashaal, who urged senior Hamas and Fatah officials to meet.
Some of the heaviest fighting has taken place around Abbas' heavily fortified seaside compound in Gaza City.
During periods of lull, residents of the area ventured out onto their balconies or even into the streets, while some security men slept on sidewalks after guarding street corner positions through the night.
A local supermarket owner, Mohammed Badrasawi, said the security forces posted in the neighborhood bought most of his bottled water and the entire stock of playing cards -- 150 decks -- along with chess boards and dominos for the long hours of guard duty.
After a week of fighting, garbage piles were growing. A few children were picking up spent ammunition.
In Israel, more homemade Hamas rockets hit the border town of Sderot on Friday, injuring four Israelis. One rocket fell yesterday, hitting a house in another area. Israel retaliated with airstrikes on two suspected Hamas rocket workshops in Gaza City.
Despite an escalating air campaign, a senior Israeli army officer said there were no immediate plans for a major ground offensive against rocket teams, saying Israel was reluctant to do something that might unite the Palestinian factions. He spoke on condition of anonymity because no final decision had been made.
In a new tactic, Hamas abducted two senior civilians with ties to Fatah late on Friday.
The gunmen freed Abdel Salam Abu Askar, a veteran journalist who advises Fatah's Gaza strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, after several hours. But Majed Abu Ghoneima was still being held. He is the office manager for Abdullah Franji, a senior Fatah official.
In related news, the Israeli ambassador to the US on Friday warned that Israel's air strikes on the Gaza Strip had been a "very measured" response to Palestinian attacks, but it could take "other actions" if necessary.
"Our response so far has been very measured because we understand the game plan of the other side, because we carefully assess the different options," Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor said.
"But the situation is very volatile and the trend is very negative, which may necessitate other actions in the future -- or not so much in the future, depending on the developments," he said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.