20 killed as Israel storms Gaza
Middle East Desk Report

GAZA CITY—Three Israeli soldiers and 17 Palestinians, one a cameraman for an international news agency, were killed on Wednesday as troops backed by helicopters stormed into the Gaza Strip.
Fadhil Shanaa, 25, a Reuters cameraman, was critically wounded when a missile hit his vehicle in the central Gaza Strip. He died after being taken to hospital, Dr Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services, told. Two more people were killed in the air strike, medics said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident. Shanaa was driving near the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, where at least nine Palestinians were killed and 17 more were wounded in an earlier air strike. “There was an aerial raid on Al-Bureij against armed gunmen and we identified hitting the target,” an Israeli military spokesman said.
Earlier in the day clashes erupted after Palestinian gunmen approached the security fence separating Gaza from Israel near the Nahal Oz fuel terminal which supplies most of Gaza’s fuel and which was attacked last week. “Three soldiers were killed and three were wounded in an exchange of fire,” an army spokeswoman said.
Hamas claimed it killed the soldiers in a “sophisticated ambush.” “This ambush is a message to let the Zionist enemy know that Gaza will remain a cauldron that will break its will and criminal plans,” said Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
Four members of the brigades were killed earlier by an Israeli unit backed by helicopters, Palestinian medics said. Six more were captured and taken back to Israel at dawn, the sources added.
In a separate incident, a soldier was wounded when Palestinian gunmen opened fire from a mosque which was used “for storing a large amount of explosive substances and explosive devices,” a military statement said.
Another Palestinian militant was killed in an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip that wounded three other people. The soldiers called in air attacks as militants fired mortar shells and anti-tank missiles, the Israeli army said, adding that 10 gunmen were hit.
The latest casualties bring to 409 the number of people killed, most of them Gaza militants, since Israel and the Palestinians relaunched formal peace talks at a US conference in November, according to an AFP count. Wednesday’s toll was the highest in Gaza since March 1, when Israeli forces killed more than 60 Palestinians in a land and air blitz.
The clashes came one week after Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli civilians who worked at the Nahal Oz terminal. Israel halted all fuel deliveries to Gaza after the April 9 attack. A security official said the terminal reopened on Wednesday, but only to transfer fuel for Gaza’s power plant.
The United Nations earlier called for larger quantities of fuel to be supplied and distributed in the impoverished territory, which is under a crippling Israeli embargo.
A UN statement said that even before the attack on Nahal Oz, the amount of fuel delivered by Israel was “inadequate to fulfil Gaza’s requirements.” The territory was receiving just 3.8 million litres of diesel and 340,000 litres of benzene, compared with more than 8.8 million litres and 1.7 million litres respectively a year previously.
Israel has sealed Gaza off from all but limited supplies of vital goods since Hamas seized power in June, and says the measures are aimed at pressuring the Islamist movement to stop militants firing rockets at the Jewish state.
Israel and the United States consider Hamas a terrorist organisation and have criticised plans by former US president Jimmy Carter to meet its leaders.