Gaza's top energy official warned that power cuts caused by Israel's reduction in fuel supplies mean an especially hard winter for impoverished Palestinians, as human rights groups asked Israel's Supreme Court to stop the cutbacks.
On Sunday, Kanan Obeid, chairman of Gaza's Hamas-run energy authority, said Gaza now has only 35 percent of the power its 1.5 million residents need after fuel supplies were cut nearly in half.
The power outages, which will rotate across Gaza, come just days ahead of US President George W. Bush's visit to the region to promote recently restarted peace talks between Israel and the moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank.
Israel said the purpose of the cutback was to nudge Palestinians to call on militants to stop their daily rocket attacks on southern Israel.
Last week, along with dozens of crude homemade rockets, militants fired a longer-range Katyusha at an Israeli city, and Israel stepped up its retaliation.
"There is no doubt that this constitutes an intensification and escalation in terrorism perpetrated by terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday before his Cabinet discussed the issue.
He said his defense minister "has ordered security forces to intensify the Israeli response."
Five Palestinians were killed in Gaza through the day. On Sunday morning, Israeli forces moved into the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, withdrawing at nightfall.
Two civilians were among the dead on Sunday. One man was caught in a crossfire and a woman was killed when a projectile struck a house, witnesses and a Palestinian health official said.
Israel has been waging its military campaign in Gaza while trying to negotiate with the moderate West Bank-based government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert and Abbas are planning to meet a day before Bush arrives tomorrow.
Israel supplies all of Gaza's fuel and 60 percent of its electricity. Even before the latest cutback, blackouts were common in the territory because Israeli strikes have knocked out electrical transformers.
But the impending cutoffs deepened the misery of its impoverished people as winter set in. They directed their frustration at Israel.
"The Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people," said Hassan Akram, owner of a grocery in Gaza City.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker said the fuel cutbacks were "geared to exerting pressure on the terrorists to cease" their rocket attacks, but added that Israel would maintain the supply of vital goods and services.
Ten human rights groups appealed to Israel's Supreme Court to stop the fuel cutbacks. Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, one of the groups, said in a statement on Sunday that the fuel reductions "mean longer and more frequent power outages for hospitals, water wells and other humanitarian services, in blatant violation of international law."
Hamas announced it launched three rockets into Israel on Sunday afternoon, a rare statement from the group, which has largely left rocket fire to smaller factions.
Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu called on Abbas to cancel his meeting with Olmert because of Israel's military operations in Gaza, charging that the meeting gives "political cover ... to these crimes."
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS