 At least 60 people are thought to have been killed in northern Afghanistan after a Nato raid hit two hijacked petrol lorries. Gulam Mohyuddin, the local chief of police, said on Friday that the air raid had hit the tankers in Kunduz province, near the Tajikistan border. James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said members of the Taliban had hijacked the lorries, travelling from Tajikistan, and taken them to the district of Aliabad. "The Taliban there said 'help yourself' to the village, and a large crowd appeared," Bays said. "It appears that then the US launched a bombing mission to bomb those trucks." Jon Stock, press officer for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), said: "I can confirm that there was an air strike last night or early this morning." "Isaf's target in the air raid was insurgents," he said. Mohammad Omar, the Kunduz governor, said that many Taliban fighters were killed in the attack, including a senior Taliban commander. Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said that as many as 90 civilians, who had come out to take the fuel from the lorries, had been killed in the attack. He confirmed that the two lorries had been hijacked, but said that only one was hit in the air raid after the other got stuck in the mud in Aliabad district and was abandoned. An Al Jazeera producer in Kunduz province said that he had seen at least 50 injured people in a local hospital, all burn-victims, and all of them said they had lost family in the incident. "My brother was burnt when the aircraft bombed the fuel tankers. I don't know whether he is dead or alive," one villager said outside the hospital. Our correspondent said: "If these reports are confirmed, this will be a definite blow to General [Stanley] McChrystal, the US and Nato army commander in Afghanistan, who has urged US forces to avoid civilian causalities where at all possible." Source: Al Jazeera (English) 
 Bombings rocked Iraq on Thursday, killing at least six people and wounding at least another 85, an Iraqi official told CNN. Eleven of the 12 bombs struck in the evening, when streets are busier than usual during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
At least four people were killed and 42 others were wounded Thursday evening when a car bomb and three roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in Musayyiba, a town south of Baghdad, said an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The bombs went off near a Shiite shrine, and a number of Shiite pilgrims were among the dead and wounded, the official said. Another roadside bomb near a Shiite shrine in Mahauil, south of Baghdad, wounded at least eight others, the official said. At an outdoor market in Aun, near the Shiite city of Karbala, a sticky bomb affixed to a car killed two people and wounded three, the official said. In Baghdad, at least 28 people were wounded in bombings that rattled the city, the official said. Ten were hurt in two separate bombings in southwestern Baghdad, the official said. In the predominantly Sunni district of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad, five people were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated, the official said. Two other bombings in Baghdad wounded five members of anti-al Qaeda groups known as Awakening Councils, the official said. A sticky bomb attached to the car of an Awakening Council member in southern Baghdad's Dora district wounded him and four of his guards, the official said. Four of the eight people wounded in a bombing in a busy street in northern Baghdad's Kasra neighborhood were also members of the council, the official said. Awakening Councils, or Sons of Iraq, are made up mainly of former Sunni insurgents who turned on al Qaeda in Iraq. They are credited for playing a key role in reducing violence across the country since 2007. Earlier on Thursday, a car parked near a busy restaurant in Baquba blew up and wounded four people, local police said. Baquba is northeast of Baghdad in the provincial capital of Diyala. Source: CNN
 Casualties there are mounting – this has been the deadliest month for US forces since the fighting began in 2001. The losses have attracted less attention in the US than British losses have in Britain, and pressure on the administration to pull out has been mild.
But this will change. When it does, Mr Obama will longingly recall those carefree months debating healthcare. Quietly, public opinion has already turned against the war. According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 51 per cent now say the war is not worth fighting. Among Democrats, seven out of 10 say that. Read more here,,,, Source: Financial Times
 A SUICIDE car bomb exploded outside the NATO military headquarters in the Afghan capital Kabul today, killing three people and wounding at least 70.
The attack in the heart of the city comes just days before August 20 presidential and provincial council elections.
The blast was at the main gate of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and was caused by a suicide bomber, defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters at the site.
ISAF personnel are believed to be among the casualties.
Also in the area are the embassies of India, Spain, Italy and the United States, and the presidential palace is about 200 metres away.
ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Eric Tremblay said there were casualties among the International Security Assistance Force as well as some Afghan civilians.
"The bomber was stopped by Afghan security at the first gate," he said.
The explosion was outside the main gate of the ISAF headquarters, where hundreds of troops from various countries are stationed.
The base includes the living quarters and offices of General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of more than 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan.
About 6200 ISAF troops are stationed in Kabul at various bases.
A health ministry spokesman said 57 wounded, including 12 women and a child, were in the main civilian hospital. Most of them had superficial wounds, he said.
About 20 others were undergoing treatment in the military hospital, a defence ministry official said. The Taliban, which is leading a mounting insurgency, has not threatened to attack the polls but called on Afghans to boycott the election and join their campaign for “independence” instead.
It was the first suicide attack on the city in months, after a spate of such blasts last year claimed by the Taliban and other insurgent groups.
Eight rockets struck the Afghan capital on Tuesday, including one that landed near the US embassy, wounding a man and a child, the government said, raising tensions ahead of the elections.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the dawn attacks, saying its fighters targeted Afghan soldiers and the Kabul international airport.
The city has not seen a significant attack in months but there are fears the Taliban and other insurgents will strike in the lead-up to the August 20 elections. Source: The Australian
General Stanley McChrystal warned yesterday that US casualties, already at record levels, would remain high for many months. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal from Kabul, General McChrystal said the Taliban's strength had grown as they moved beyond traditional areas in southern Afghanistan to threaten formerly stable regions in the north and west. The commander's comments indicate a surge in US troop numbers, expected to increase from 31,000 to 68,000 by later this year, has not made progress so far. Just hours after the interview appeared, Taliban militants launched a major attack on a provincial government and police headquarters near the capital Kabul -- 10 days before nationwide elections. General McChrystal said the Taliban were inflicting significant casualties with sophisticated attacks that combined roadside bombs with ambushes by small teams of heavily armed militants. The assessment is a preview of a strategic assessment General McChrystal is expected to provide Washington later this month, which follows a revised military policy of protecting the local populations ahead of hunting down insurgents. The general's assessment coincides with a report that 50 Afghan drug traffickers with links to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon hit list to be captured or killed. According to a study to be released by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, US military commanders have told congressional leaders they believe the policy is legal under the military's rules of engagement and international law. Read more here... Source: The Australian
 BAGHDAD — At least 39 people were killed and more than 209 were wounded early Monday morning as a series of bomb attacks struck Baghdad and a village near the northern city of Mosul. A pair of truck bombs exploded simultaneously, destroying an entire Shiite village known as Khazna, about ten miles east of Mosul, according to an official in the Ministry of Interior who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry policy. The village is inhabited mainly by Shiite Shabaks, a small Kurdish-speaking minority that lives in northern Iraq. The police in Mosul said 30 homes were destroyed from the two bombs, which were placed in trucks that had been parked overnight in the village. Police officials put the preliminary toll of casualties at 23 dead and 128 wounded. George Kako, a resident and contractor in the nearby town of Bartella, said many people in Khazna were still trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings. He said he had provided an earthmover to help in the rescue effort. “It is a horrifying and disgusting scene,” said Mr. Kako, speaking by telephone from Bartella. “Those who did it are not human.” In Baghdad, two other blasts targeted lines of workers who had gathered to look for jobs as day laborers, one in the El Amal district, the other in Shorta, both of which are Shiite areas. The El Amal blast went off at 6 a.m., killing seven and wounding 46. Half an hour later, the explosion in Shorta killed nine and wounded 35, according to the ministry official. Both explosions were attributed to bombs in cars that had been parked in the areas for a long period of time. A similar string of attacks struck Mosul and Baghdad last Friday, the weekly day of public prayer in Islam. Those bombings killed at least 43 people and wounded hundreds, police officials said, and they came at the end of an important Shiite religious occasion. The attacks on Friday occurred just two days after the Iraqi government said it would lift all blast walls from the main roads in the capital, and the head of Baghdad’s operations command, Maj. Gen. Abud Qanbar, declared that “security is not an issue anymore.” A week earlier, five Shiite mosques in Baghdad had been bombed in coordinated attacks. At least 29 people were killed in those blasts. The sprawling, seething city of Mosul, among the most violent places in Iraq, is home to militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the mostly homegrown insurgent group that is known to have some foreign leadership. The city is also the home of the banned Baath Party, once led by Saddam Hussein, who erected a large palace compound there. It was from Mosul and other towns in Nineveh Province that Saddam recruited many of his senior generals and closest aides. Most American forces have withdrawn from posts within Mosul and are now garrisoned at a base. A fractious power struggle between Sunni Arab and Kurdish political factions has further complicated the security issue in the province, which is home to a number of ethnic and religious groups. Source: New York Times
A TRUCK bomb has killed 64 people near the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, the country's bloodiest attack in 15 months just 10 days before US troops are due to quit urban areas. The attack, which also wounded 202 people, struck near a mosque in Taza Kharmatu, a predominantly Turkmen Shi'ite town south of Kirkuk, at around 1pm (local time on Saturday, with women and children among the victims, officials said. "This ugly crime is an attempt to harm security and stability and spread mistrust of the Iraqi forces," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. "Our forces ... will arrest those who committed the crime in Taza Kharmatu and bring them to justice." Sabah al-Daoudi, the Iraqi health ministry's representative in Kirkuk, said 64 people had died and 202 were injured in what he described as a "suicide explosion". Shukur Abdullah, the head of Kirkuk hospital's mortuary, confirmed the death toll. Mr Daoudi said around 30 of the wounded were being kept in hospital for treatment. A senior police official, who did not want to be identified, said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, and appeared to have been an al-Qaeda bombing. More than one tonne of explosives was used in the bombing, the official said. "I saw a truck passing through a very narrow road and, a few minutes later, I heard a huge explosion and the ceiling of my shop collapsed on my head," said Akbar Zain al-Abdin, 40, whose fertiliser and farm products store was almost completely destroyed. "I didn't see a fire, but I saw a huge cloud of sand in the sky," he said. "The victims were our relatives and our friends, their houses collapsed on them." The Turkmen Front, Iraq's main Turkmen political party, announced three days of mourning and called for an "immediate investigation... and for the criminals to be brought to justice." The attack, which took place around 400 metres from the Shiite Al-Rasul mosque, also seriously damaged dozens of houses, with police saying that many victims could still be under the rubble. An AFP reporter at the scene said the bomb left a deep crater in the ground. In the aftermath of the attack, police urged local residents to donate blood. The bombing was the bloodiest single attack in Iraq since March 6, 2008, when a roadside bomb was followed by a suicide attack in central Baghdad's Karrada neighbourhood, killing 68 people. More recently, a car bomb on June 10 in a market in Batha, in the largely peaceful southern province of Dhi Qar, killed 19 people and wounded 56. The attack was blamed on al-Qaeda. Also on Saturday, a car bomb in the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killed three police and wounded seven others. The Taza bombing comes barely a week ahead of a deadline for US troops to pull back from Iraq's built-up areas as part of a landmark security accord signed between Washington and Baghdad in November. The agreement calls on US forces to leave Iraq altogether by the end of 2011. On Saturday, the US army handed over to Iraqi control a base in Baghdad's sprawling Shi'ite neighbourhood of Sadr City, once a bastion for anti-US radicals. The Iraqi premier warned earlier this month that insurgent groups and militia would likely step up their attacks in the coming weeks in a bid to undermine confidence in Iraq's own security forces. Violence has dropped markedly in Iraq in recent months, with May seeing the lowest Iraqi death toll since the 2003 invasion. But attacks remain common, particularly in Baghdad and the main northern city of Mosul. Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, is plagued with intercommunal tensions among its Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab communities. Those tensions prevented the holding of provincial elections on January 31, when all but three autonomous Kurdish provinces voted for new councils. Source: The Australian
 Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem February 25
ALLEGATIONS that 42 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli shells near a UN school in the Gaza Strip during last month's fighting have been challenged by Israeli investigators who say that fatalities in the incident totalled 12, only three of them non-combatants.
The allegations had served as the centrepiece of charges by Palestinians and international agencies that Israel used indiscriminate and excessive force against civilians during the three-week operation.
In the initial version of the incident, based on Palestinian sources, the casualties were said to have been inside a UN school in the Jabalya refugee camp north of Gaza City. This proved to be wrong when UN officials acknowledged that no shell had hit the school. However, Israel was still accused of having caused the deaths of civilians.
"I know that no one was killed in the school," a senior UN official was quoted as saying.
"But 41 innocent people were killed in the street outside the school. The state of Israel has to answer for that.
"What did they know and what care did they take?"
An answer to that question has been furnished by Colonel Moshe Levi, head of the Israel Defence Forces' Gaza Co-ordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), which normally deals with the transfer of aid to the Gaza Strip through Israeli crossing points.
With the onset of the war, Colonel Levi and his staff began compiling a list of casualties in Gaza, as reported by Palestinian health officials, and comparing the names with those on its own list of Gaza residents and its registry of militants.
In a 200-page report recently issued, the CLA identifies more than 1200 Palestinian fatalities by name and gives their Palestinian identity numbers, the circumstances in which they were killed and the militant group, if any, with which they were affiliated.
The report concludes that about one-third of the total fatalities were civilian, and not two-thirds, as Palestinian sources claimed. The CLA declines to reveal all its sources.
Focusing on the fatalities killed near the UN school in Jabalya, the CLA concluded that 12 people were killed, not 42 or 43 as variously reported, when Israeli mortars fired three shells at Hamas mortarmen who had fired at Israeli forces.
Israel has released the names of nine of those killed -- two females and seven males. In all, nine of those killed in the incident were identified by the Israeli army as Hamas operatives and three as non-combatants.
Israel maintains that the international community was duped by Hamas claims that most of the fatalities were innocent civilians.
The UN is compiling its own report on casualties suffered during the war. Source: The Australian
 Stop funding a Palestinian youth bulge, and the fighting will stop too.
By Gunnar Heinsohn
As the world decries Israel's attempt to defend itself from the rocket attacks coming from Gaza, consider this: When Hamas routed Fatah in Gaza in 2007, it cost nearly 350 lives and 1,000 wounded. Fatah's surrender brought only a temporary stop to the type of violence and bloodshed that are commonly seen in lands where at least 30% of the male population is in the 15-to-29 age bracket.
In such "youth bulge" countries, young men tend to eliminate each other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions available in their society. In Arab nations such as Lebanon (150,000 dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead in the Islamists' war against their own people between 1999 and 2006), the slaughter abated only when the fertility rates in these countries fell from seven children per woman to fewer than two. The warring stopped because no more warriors were being born.
In Gaza, however, there has been no demographic disarmament. The average woman still bears six babies. For every 1,000 men aged 40-44, there are 4,300 boys aged 0-4 years. In the U.S. the latter figure is 1,000, and in the U.K. it's only 670.
And so the killing continues. In 2005, when Israel was still an occupying force, Gaza lost more young men to gang fights and crime than in its war against the "Zionist enemy." Despite the media's obsession with the Mideast conflict, it has cost many fewer lives than the youth bulges in West Africa, Lebanon or Algeria. In the six decades since Israel's founding, "only" some 62,000 people (40,000 Arabs, 22,000 Jews) have been killed in all the Israeli-Arab wars and Palestinian terror attacks. During that same time, some 11 million Muslims have been killed in wars and terror attacks -- mostly at the hands of other Muslims.
What accounts for the Mideast conflict's relatively low body count? Hamas and their ilk certainly aim to kill as many Israelis as possible. To their indignation, the Israelis are quite good at protecting themselves. On the other hand, Israel, despite all the talk about its "disproportionate" use of force, is doing its utmost to spare civilian deaths. Even Hamas acknowledges that most of the Palestinians killed by Israeli air raids are from their own ranks.
But about 10%-15% of Gaza's casualties are women and minors -- a tragedy impossible to prevent in a densely settled area in which nearly half the people are under 15 and the terrorists hide among them.
The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world's refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well.
UNRWA is benevolently funded by the U.S. (31%) and the European Union (nearly 50%) -- only 7% of the funds come from Muslim sources. Thanks to the West's largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence.
One result of this unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza's population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million. The West basically created a new Near Eastern people in Gaza that at current trends will reach three million in 2040. Within that period, Gazans may alter the justifications and directions of their aggression but are unlikely to stop the aggression itself.
The Hamas-Fatah truce of June 2007 allowed the Islamists again to direct all their energy on attacking Israel. The West pays for food, schools, medicine and housing, while Muslim nations help out with the military hardware. Unrestrained by such necessities as having to earn a living, the young have plenty of time on their hands for digging tunnels, smuggling, assembling missiles and firing 4,500 of them at Israel since 2006. While this gruesome activity has slowed the Palestinian internecine slaughter, it forced some 250,000 Israelis into bomb shelters.
The current situation can only get worse. Israel is being pushed into a corner.
Gazan teenagers have no future other than war. One rocket master killed is immediately replaced by three young men for whom a martyr's death is no less honorable than victory. Some 230,000 Gazan males, aged 15 to 29, who are available for the battlefield now, will be succeeded by 360,000 boys under 15 (45% of all Gazan males) who could be taking up arms within the coming 15 years.
As long as we continue to subsidize Gaza's extreme demographic armament, young Palestinians will likely continue killing their brothers or neighbors. And yet, despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year.
By generously supporting UNRWA's budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in their own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza's untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war by proxy against the Jews of Israel.
If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.
If we make this urgently needed reform, then by at least 2025 many boys in Gaza -- like in Algeria -- would enter puberty as only sons. They would be able to look forward to a more secure future in a less violent society.
If the West prefers calm around Gaza even before 2025, it may consider offering immigration to those young Palestinians only born because of the West's well-meant but cruelly misguided aid. In the decades to come, North America and Europe will have to take in tens of millions of immigrants anyway to slow the aging of their populations. If, say, 200,000 of them are taken from the 360,000 boys coming of age in Gaza in the next 15 years, that would be a negligible move for the big democracies but a quantum leap for peace in the Near East.
Many of Gaza's young -- like in much of the Muslim world -- dream of leaving anyway. Who would not want to get out of that strip of land but the international NGOs and social workers whose careers depend on perpetuating Gaza's misery?
Mr. Heinsohn heads the Raphael Lemkin Institute at the University of Bremen, Europe's first institute devoted to comparative genocide research. Source: Wall Street Journal
 By Aaron Klein
JAFFA, Israel – The U.S. and international news media have largely accepted as fact Hamas-provided casualty counts following a series of Israeli surgical strikes today in the Gaza Strip, despite Hamas' and the Palestinian Authority's long and sordid histories of greatly inflating casualty figures.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told WND, "The Hamas government in Gaza has instituted a Taliban-like regime and has systematically destroyed independent civil society, which makes it pretty difficult for there to be independent verification of these numbers,"
Regev continued, "One must keep in mind Hamas has a major propaganda interest in highlighting civilian casualties while at the same time minimizing the number of Hamas combatants killed."
Still, the news media today reported as fact that at least 205 people had been killed in the Israeli strikes, which targeted dozens of Hamas buildings in a purported Israeli bid to clamp down on repeated rocket attacks launched from Gaza and aimed at nearby Jewish cities.
Most news reports failed to mention the casualty numbers were provided by Hamas, which claimed only 3 of the casualties were actual Hamas military leaders.
"Israeli air strikes killed more than 200 people in Gaza," reported a widely-circulated Reuters article.
"Egypt condemned as 'murder' Israel's Saturday air raids on Gaza that killed at least 205 Palestinians," reported the AFP. Similar statements were parroted in over 4,500 English language reports today.
With somber music playing in the background, both CNN and the BBC have been airing continuous loops of what the networks claimed were Palestinian civilian casualties being rushed into a local hospital. Both networks aired the same footage, provided to them by Al Jazeera, which is openly sided with Hamas.
"Does hitting so-called Hamas institutions mean over 200 civilians killed?" Regev was twice asked today by a BBC anchor during an interview.
CNN interviewed a man identified as a Gaza-based doctor who claimed two-thirds of the "over 200 casualties" were women and children. The network also featured – without challenge – a man identified as a Gaza-based human rights activist, who accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians and perpetuating a "massacre" in Gaza.
Neither CNN nor the BBC have thus far featured any footage today of the southern Israeli towns that have been battered by Palestinian rocket fire in recent days, killing one Israeli.
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, claimed his group's casualty counts were minimized.
"We're talking about much more than 200. Every minute we get more information on more civilians killed," Barhoum told WND, speaking by cell phone from Gaza.
"We call on the international community to condemn this Israeli massacre and hold Israel back from more war crimes," he said.
The IDF tonight released a list of some of the targets hit: a Hamas headquarters and training camp in Tel Zatar; a "Palestinian Prisoner Tower" in Gaza City that was turned into a Hamas operations center and armory; a Hamas police academy, which Hamas claims was bombed during a graduation ceremony, killing 70-80 Hamas operatives; training camps in southern and central Gaza; the former office of late Palestinian Yasser Arafat in Gaza City that is now used by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh; and the Izzadin Kassam Brigades headquarters in the northern Gaza Strip.
Hamas and the PA have been caught many times inflating casualty counts. In June, 2006, Hamas claimed the Israel Defense Forces killed over 20 sunbathers on a Gaza beach, but it was later determined seven were killed, and the cause of the explosion was not the IDF but a Hamas explosives booby trap intended for Israeli naval forces.
Following a 2002 Israeli antiterror raid in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, Hamas and the PA claimed hundreds of Palestinian civilians were murdered. Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat claimed on CNN that "more than 500 people" were killed. He repeated the charge on CNN a day later, adding that 300 Palestinians were being buried in mass graves.
It was later determined 54 Palestinians were killed, mostly terrorists, while the IDF lost 23 troops it engaged in house-to-house combat – instead of massive air raids – in order to limit civilian casualties.
Israel claimed Hamas routinely labels as civilians its gunmen killed in Israeli anti-terror attacks.
In today's air strikes, the IDF maintains it tried to minimize casualties. An IDF statement said its military strikes were predicated on precise intelligence amassed in recent months to target specific Hamas facilities.
Olmert's office released a statement explaining the attacks were launched, "following the violation of the terms of the truce by Hamas and the unceasing attacks by Hamas authorities on Israeli civilians in the south of the country."
The U.S. for its part squarely blamed Hamas for the Gaza violence.
"The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement.
"The ceasefire should be restored immediately," Rice said. "The United States calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza."
Today's strikes come after Hamas refused to renew a six-month truce with Israel that expired last week unless Israel met a series of conditions, including opening the country's borders with Gaza and expanding the truce to the Fatah-controlled West Bank. In a show of force, Hamas in recent days launched hundreds of rockets from Gaza into nearby Jewish cities, including Ashkelon, which houses a power plant that provides the Gaza Strip with 75 percent of its electricity. Source: WND
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At least 60 people are thought to have been killed in northern Afghanistan after a Nato raid hit two hijacked petrol lorries. 
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