April 17, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1429

GAZA, April 16: Israeli forces killed 17 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Wednesday, medical officials and witnesses said.

The attacks came after three Israeli troops died in a Hamas ambush near a border fuel pipeline. But, Israel allowed European-funded fuel into Gaza to keep its only power plant operational.

“The fuel has started to go through,” said the European Union official, referring to the Nahal Oz terminal, close to the site of clashes in which the three soldiers died.

Seventeen Palestinians, at least 11 of them civilians, were killed in Israeli assaults, Hamas and medical officials said. The dead included Fadel Shana, a cameraman of an international news agency who was felled outside his car by a blast which locals described as an Israeli air strike. At least three youths, a 67-year-old man, and four Hamas gunmen were also among the Palestinian dead.

Nahal Oz was shut down by Israel on April 9 after militants killed two Israeli civilians at the facility. Israel’s defence ministry had said it would reopen the pipeline on Wednesday, but the latest attack had raised doubts fuel would flow again soon.

Kanan Abaid, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Energy Authority in the Gaza Strip, said before pumping resumed that the power plant only had enough fuel to operate until Saturday.

The EU official said the goal was to provide “as much (fuel) as can be possibly be pumped today” because the army had yet to tell the Europeans whether they would be allowed to make further deliveries to the plant on Thursday and Friday.—Reuters