8 killed in new Israeli blitz on Gaza
Middle East Desk Report

GAZA CITY—Eight Palestinians, including two women, were killed in Israeli ground and air bombardments in Gaza on Thursday, local medical sources said, in the latest blitz against the Hamas-ruled territory.
Israeli troops and tanks backed by combat helicopters were operating in the village of Bani Suheila near the southern town of Khan Yunis, witnesses and medical sources said. Eight people, including a mother and daughter and at least three militants, were killed in the Israeli bombardments, while 30 people were injured and several houses destroyed, the sources said. Israel has carried out near-daily military strikes and incursions across what it considers a “hostile entity” in a bid to halt militant rocket fire since the Islamist movement Hamas seized power in Gaza in June.
The renewed violence comes shortly before US President George W. Bush is due in the region in a bid to push forward recently revived Middle East peace talks. In Gaza, brothers Ahmad Fayyad, 20, and 25-year-old Sami Fayyad, both members of the radical Islamic Jihad, were killed in a raid on a house which also killed their mother, Karima, 50, and sister Asmaa, 20, the medical sources said.