July 06, 2007	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 20, 1428

GAZA CITY, July 5: Israeli troops killed 11 Palestinian fighters in fierce clashes on Thursday while ground troops backed by air power pushed into the Gaza Strip, stepping up pressure on the Hamas-run enclave.

Israeli troops and tanks rolled across the border into the central Gaza Strip to the outskirts of the Mughazi refugee camp, where they got locked in heavy firefights with Palestinian militants, medical sources and the army said.

The military called in two air strikes during the fighting that raged all day, killing five members of Hamas's armed wing, medics and witnesses said. Another member of Hamas's Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades was killed in fighting in the same area.

Around 26 Palestinians were wounded, including five seriously, in the intense clashes about one kilometre into Gaza, from which Israel withdrew all troops and settlers in 2005.

Several hours later a member of Hamas's smaller rival, Islamic Jihad, was killed by an Israeli rocket that witnesses and medics said was fired at a group of people seeking to rescue a wounded person.

An eighth fighter died in fighting in the same area, but his identity was not immediately known, while another three were killed in centre of the Gaza Strip on Thursday evening.

Meanwhile, a cameraman working under fire for Hamas's Al-Aqsa television had both legs amputated. Imad Ghanem, 23, was first hit by a shell and then by two bullets fired into his crumpled body as it lay on the ground, medics said.

The military said the troops and tanks were “operating against terror infrastructure” in the central Gaza Strip and that it was investigating the circumstances of the incident in which the cameraman was shot.

“We identified hitting approximately 10 armed gunmen in two air strikes and exchanges of fire on the ground. Two soldiers were wounded by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fired at a bulldozer in the central Gaza Strip and were evacuated,” an army spokesman said.

An Israeli military source said that Hamas television cameramen “cannot be considered as journalists, as they are part of Hamas's armed wing and their films are used for propaganda and intelligence purposes.” Ghanem was not wearing press-marked insignia but was carrying a video camera as he tried to film Palestinians evacuating a dead fighter during combat.

Israeli troops were also operating in northern Gaza on the outskirts of Beit Hanun, where two militants were wounded overnight. The army said the two were attempting to fire rockets at Israel.

Although Israel has vowed to bolster Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and his new Western-backed emergency government based in the occupied West Bank, it has sworn to continue attacks on militants

Abbas sacked a Hamas-led unity government in the crisis that saw the Islamists seize control of Gaza on June 15 in a deadly takeover that humiliated the mainstream security services loyal to the president's Fatah party.

Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and which is blacklisted as terrorist in the West, remains in control of Gaza where Abbas and his new prime minister Salam Fayyad effectively have no control.

In Gaza City, Hamas's self-styled Executive Force police prevented hundreds of civil servants from going to work in keeping with orders from the sacked Hamas government stipulating a Thursday-Friday weekend, witnesses said.

The Fayyad government decreed in the West Bank that Palestinian public servants should now on enjoy a Friday-Saturday weekend, citing economic reasons in order to maximise the number of working days shared with the outside world.

—AFP