South Korean bus drivers set for nationwide strike

SEOUL: Millions of South Koreans face commuter chaos on Thursday with bus drivers set to launch a national strike to protest against a bill recognising taxis as public transport.

Some 80,000 bus drivers across the country will launch the action from midnight on Wednesday, a bus union spokesman told AFP.

The strike call was confirmed after a parliamentary committee approved the proposed bill, bringing it a step closer to becoming legislation.

The union argues that the bill - which will give taxi drivers new tax benefits and allow them to drive in bus-only lanes - will eventually reduce state support for buses and disrupt their operations.

"The budget for public transport is limited, meaning the new bill may eventually force us to raise bus fares, not to mention the increased risk of car accidents in bus-only lanes," the spokesman said.

"We won't be able to drive buses as scheduled if reckless taxi drivers keep cutting in on our lanes," he added.

The threatened strike would take 45,000 buses off the roads, affecting millions of commuters and overloading already packed subway systems in major cities.

City buses carry an average of 15 million passengers each day. The transport ministry said it would expand subway operations and offer free shuttle services on Thursday.

The government also asked state agencies and schools to delay office hours and classes by an hour Thursday morning to help ease traffic chaos, Yonhap news agency said, citing a Seoul official.

The bus union said the proposed bill was a populist measure aimed at winning the votes of South Korea's nearly 300,000 registered taxi drivers ahead of the December presidential election.

- AFP/de

Read More..

Govt defends Kasab hanging; says wrong to question timing

PANJIM: Government on Wednesday denied that defended that 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab's hanging was timed before the winter session of Parliament.

Responding to questions information and broadcasting (I&B) minister Manish Tewari said that the message being sent to people is that perpetrators of the terrorist attack in Mumbai have been brought to justice.

When asked about the timing of Kasab's execution Tewari said, "To look at timing of the hanging is not right. The message being sent is that if India and its citizens are attacked, appropriate action will be taken."

He added that the decision underlined that a dastardly attack had taken place killing innocent people. "Law has taken its course. This shows if India is attacked, the perpetrators will be brought to justice," the minister said on the sidelines of IFFI function.

Read More..

New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason that making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

Read More..

Israel Combats Cyber Attacks During Gaza Offensive

The Israeli government said today that since the beginning of its military operation in Gaza, cyber attackers have launched more than 44 million attempts to disrupt the operation of various Israeli government websites, but were only successful in knocking out one site for a short period.

"One hacking attempt was successful and took down a site for a few minutes," Carmela Avner, the Chief Information Officer at the Finance Ministry, told ABC News. Avner said the website in question belongs to a "small unit of one of the ministries," but declined to comment further.

Israeli Finance Minister Dr. Yuval Steinitz ordered the government CIO unit to operate in emergency mode but said he remains confident in its abilities.

"We are reaping the fruits on the investment in recent years in the development of computerized defense systems, but we have a lot of work in store for us," he told reporters during a visit to the Government Computing Center in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister's office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the President's residence were among the government websites targeted. Israeli government websites are a common target of cyber attacks, Avner said, but the sheer volume this time around indicated a clear escalation during the Gaza operation.

The dramatic spike comes after the loose hacking collective Anonymous announced online that it would be targeting Israeli websites "in retaliation for the mistreating of people in Gaza and other areas."

Michael Gottschalk/AFP/Getty Images

Anonymous, the same group that reportedly took out the CIA's public website for a few hours in February, claimed it had attacked approximately 10,000 Israeli websites, both government and private.

Avner said most of the attacks on the government websites were designed to overload the site servers with excessive data. One method of doing that, known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attack, is a fairly rudimentary tactic historically favored by Anonymous.

Tweeting under the hashtag "OpIsrael" after the name it had given to its campaign, Anonymous claimed to have disrupted service on dozens of private Israeli websites, including the website for the Bank of Jerusalem and the local servers for news outlet MSN and search engine Bing. Both MSN and Bing's Israeli home pages appeared to have experienced trouble earlier Monday but were functioning properly as of this report. The Bank of Jerusalem's website's homepage was functioning but its English section was inaccessible.

Anonymous also tweeted a link to what it presented as the personal contact information of more than 3,000 "donors to Israel," including members of the U.S. Congress. Much of the data appeared to be a compilation of publicly available contact information.

As the real-world military operation gained steam last week, Anonymous posted what it dubbed as a "Gaza Care Package," containing information in Arabic and English about how to circumvent Israeli online surveillance by shielding IP addresses and how to set up alternative Wi-Fi access in the event of an internet shutdown.

Anonymous made the care package apparently in response to what it called Israeli threats to cut off electricity and internet access in Gaza. That threat was not reported elsewhere and there have been no reports of internet or power outages in Gaza so far.

Read More..

Gaza truce pressure builds, Cairo in focus

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - International pressure for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip puts Egypt's new Islamist president in the spotlight on Tuesday after a sixth day of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli air strikes that have killed more than 100 people.

Israel's leaders weighed the benefits and risks of sending tanks and infantry into the densely populated coastal enclave two months before an Israeli election, and indicated they would prefer a diplomatic path backed by world powers, including U.S. President Barack Obama, the European Union and Russia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top ministers debated their next moves in a meeting that lasted into the early hours of Tuesday.

"Before deciding on a ground invasion, the prime minister intends to exhaust the diplomatic move in order to see if a long-term ceasefire can be achieved," a senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said after the meeting.

Any diplomatic solution may pass through Egypt, Gaza's other neighbor and the biggest Arab nation, where the ousting of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak and election of President Mohamed Mursi is part of a dramatic reshaping of the Middle East, wrought by the Arab Spring and now affecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mursi, whose Muslim Brotherhood was mentor to the founders of Hamas, took a call from Obama on Monday telling him the group must stop rocket fire into Israel - effectively endorsing Israel's stated aim in launching the offensive last week. Obama, as quoted by the White House, also said he regretted civilian deaths - which have been predominantly among the Palestinians.

"The two leaders discussed ways to de-escalate the situation in Gaza, and President Obama underscored the necessity of Hamas ending rocket fire into Israel," the White House said.

"President Obama then called Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and received an update on the situation in Gaza and Israel. In both calls, President Obama expressed regret for the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives."

Three Israeli civilians and 108 Palestinians have been killed. Gaza officials say more than half of those killed in the enclave were civilians, 27 of them children.

EGYPT SEES DEAL

Mursi has warned Netanyahu of serious consequences from a ground invasion of the kind that killed more than 1,400 people in Gaza four years ago. But he has been careful not to alienate Israel, with whom Egypt's former military rulers signed a peace treaty in 1979, or Washington, a major aid donor to Egypt.

A meeting on Tuesday in Cairo between Mursi and Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations who flew in late on Monday, could shed light on the shape of any truce proposals.

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil told Reuters: "I think we are close, but the nature of this kind of negotiation, (means) it is very difficult to predict."

Israeli media have said Israeli officials are also in Cairo to talk. Ban is due to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem soon.

After Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal laid out demands in Cairo that Israel take the first step in restoring calm, and warned Netanyahu that a ground war in Gaza could wreck his re-election prospects in January, a senior Israeli official denied a Hamas assertion that the prime minister had asked for a truce.

"Whoever started the war must end it," Meshaal said, referring to Israel's assassination from the air on Wednesday of Hamas's Gaza military chief, a move that followed a scaling up of rocket fire onto Israeli towns over several weeks.

An official close to Netanyahu told Reuters: "Israel is prepared and has taken steps and is ready for a ground incursion which will deal severely with the Hamas military machine.

"We would prefer to see a diplomatic solution that would guarantee the peace for Israel's population in the south. If that is possible, then a ground operation would no longer be required," he added. "If diplomacy fails, we may well have no alternative but to send in ground forces."

CIVILIANS KILLED

Fortified by the ascendancy of fellow Islamists in Egypt and elsewhere, and courted by fellow Sunni Arab leaders in the Gulf keen to draw the Palestinian group away from old ties to Shi'ite Iran, Hamas has tested its room for maneuver, as well as longer-range rockets that have reached the Tel Aviv metropolis.

Israeli statistics showed some easing in the ferocity of the exchanges on Monday. Israeli police counted 110 rockets, causing no casualties, of which 42 were shot down by anti-missile batteries. Compared with more than 1,000 rockets fired in total, the indications were that the level of violence had fallen.

Palestinian militants resumed rocket fire into Israel on Tuesday morning, sending Israelis in southern towns running for shelter.

Israel's military said it had conducted 100 air strikes throughout the night. "A financial institution used by Hamas to fuel its terror activity was targeted in the northern Gaza Strip," it said.

Hamas said 4-year-old twin boys had died with their parents when their house in the town of Beit Lahiya was struck from the air. Neighbors said the occupants were not involved with militant groups.

Israel had no immediate comment on that attack. It says it takes extreme care to avoid civilians and accuses Hamas and other militant groups of deliberately placing Gaza's 1.7 million people in harm's way by placing rocket launchers among them.

Nonetheless, fighting Israel, whose right to exist Hamas refuses to recognize, is popular with many Palestinians and has kept the movement competitive with the secular Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who remains in the West Bank after losing Gaza to Hamas in a civil war five years ago.

"Hamas and the others, they're our sons and our brothers, we're fingers on the same hand," said 55-year-old Faraj al-Sawafir, whose home was blasted by Israeli forces. "They fight for us and are martyred, they take losses and we sacrifice too."

Thousands turned out on Monday to mourn four children and five women who were among 11 people killed in an Israeli air strike that flattened a three-storey home the previous day.

The bodies were wrapped in Palestinian and Hamas flags. Echoes of explosions mixed with cries of grief and defiant chants of "God is greatest!"

ISRAELI INVESTIGATION

Israel said it was investigating the strike that brought the block crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the house might have been targeted by mistake.

For the second straight day, Israeli missiles blasted a tower block in the city of Gaza housing international media. Two people were killed there, one of them an Islamic Jihad militant.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of the coastal enclave, tanks, artillery and infantry have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border.

Israel has also authorized the call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that number.

Although 84 percent of Israelis support the current Gaza assault, according to a poll by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, only 30 percent want an invasion.

With the power balances of the Middle East drastically shifted by the Arab Spring during a first Obama term that began two days after Israel ended its last major Gaza offensive, the newly re-elected U.S. president faces testing choices to achieve Washington's hopes for peace and stability across the region.

In an echo of frictions over the civil war in Syria, Russia accused the United States on Monday of blocking a bid by the U.N. Security Council to condemn the escalating conflict in the Gaza Strip. Washington has generally stopped the U.N. body from putting what it sees as undue pressure on its Israeli ally.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Mohammad Zargham)

Read More..

Foreign investment in China drops in October

BEIJING: Foreign direct investment in China fell again in October, the government said on Tuesday, as investors remained cautious amid global economic woes and China's own slowdown.

Foreign companies invested $8.3 billion in factories and other projects in China last month, down 0.24 percent from a year ago, Shen Danyang, Ministry of Commerce spokesman, said at a regular news conference.

The drop extended a broad downward trend stretching back to November of last year. Since then, FDI has declined every month except May, when it rose a marginal 0.05 percent.

For the first 10 months of the year, FDI fell 3.45 percent on year to $91.7 billion, Shen said.

The government has blamed the slump on the slowdown in global economic growth, the prolonged European debt crisis and rising costs and weak demand at home.

The world's second-largest economy itself has slowed for seven consecutive quarters as well, expanding 7.4 percent in the three months ended September 30, its worst performance since the first quarter of 2009.

Investment from debt-laden European Union countries decreased by five percent on year in the January-October period to $5.2 billion, according to the ministry's data.

Ten Asian countries and regions, including Hong Kong and Thailand, invested $78.0 billion in China in the period, down 4.7 percent from a year ago.

In contrast to dropping FDI, China's investment abroad surged sharply this year after slowing last year owing to a weak global economic recovery and financial turmoil in Europe and the United States.

Outbound direct investment in non-financial sectors in the first 10 months of the year totalled $58.2 billion, soaring 25.8 percent from the same period last year, Shen said.

"This is the inevitable result of the implementation of our strategy (for Chinese companies) to go abroad, the improvement of Chinese firms' competitiveness and changes in the international market," he said.

In 2011, the figure stood at $60.1 billion, up just 1.8 percent year on year, previous official data showed.

China has set goals to increase overseas direct investment at an average annual rate of 17 percent through 2015 to $150 billion by then, according to the government.

- AFP/de

Read More..

YS Jaganmohan Reddy's sister Sharmila Reddy takes over, Congress worried

HYDERABAD: Congress' belief that a prolonged jail for YSR Congress party president YS Jaganmohan Reddy may drain the enthusiasm of his supporters appears to have come to a nought, with his sister Sharmila also drawing huge crowds.

Reddy, Kadapa MP and son of late Congress iron man YS Rajasekhara Reddy, is in jail for the last 175 days, after he was arrested by CBI on May 27, for alleged disproportionate assets. Added to frequent defections of MLAs from Congress, TDP and TRS into YSR Congress, the long-term political ally All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) recently served a blow to Congress by withdrawing support to government.

An MP, who did not want to be named, said the senior Congress leaders at the Centre and state were acutely worried after seeing the massive crowds that Sharmila Reddy was drawing over the last month or so.

Clad in a salwar kameez and a pair of sneakers, YSR's daughter Sharmila has already covered over 430 km out of targeted 3,000-km padayatra in the last 32 days, helping the party consolidate its base.

K Nageshwar, an independent member of legislative council, said: "Since YSR Congress is the legacy of the late YSR, it now hardly matters whether Jagan is in jail or outside jail. It also hardly matters whether it is Sharmila or Vijayamma (widow of YSR). As long as the legacy has hold over the people, YSR Congress will continue to draw crowds. Of course, there should be a leader who capitalises on the legacy and translates it into votes. This was not there for the YSR Congress since it had no organisation and rank and file. Jagan was its sole leader. Now it has several leaders, defected from other parties, at various levels."

Jagan's aide and party leader Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy gives a large part of the credit on YSR Congress' gaining strength to Congress' scheme to pester Reddy.

"The more Congress harasses Jagan, the more YSR Congress consolidates in the state since majority people have accepted Jagan as YSR's political heir and believe only Jagan can deliver on both welfare and development fronts. Almost every family in the state was benefited by YSR's welfare and development schemes and they are hurt as most of the schemes were discontinued by the state government."

Reddy is slowly attracting leaders from Congress, TDP and TRS, helping the party strengthen the organization with rank and file across three regions of the state.

As Sharmila's padayatra continues, several more MLAs from Congress, TDP and TRS, who had already met Jagan in jail over the last few months, have announced their decision to join YSR Congress.

A sizeable part of the success of Sharmila's padayatra also goes to leaders and cadres defecting into YSR Congress from the ruling and opposition parties, admits a party leader.

Congress' attempts to appropriate the YSR legacy proved a dampener owing to weak leadership and the key opposition TDP also failed in capitalising on the situation and regaining image.

Read More..

EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

Read More..

Officials: Israeli Strike Kills 11 Civilians in Gaza

The Palestinian civilian death toll mounted Monday as Israeli aircraft struck densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip in its campaign to quell militant rocket fire menacing nearly half of Israel's population.

Overnight, an airstrike leveled two houses belonging to a single family, killing two children and two adults and injuring 42 people, said Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra. Rescue workers were frantically searching for 12 to 15 people under the rubble.

Shortly after, Israeli aircraft bombarded the remains of the former national security compound in Gaza City. Al-Kidra said flying shrapnel killed one child and wounded others living nearby.

A missile strike on a pickup truck killed three members of the radical Islamic Jihad group, said security officials from the Hamas militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. They spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

In all, 84 Palestinians, half of them civilians, have been killed in the five-day onslaught and 720 have been wounded. Three Israeli civilians have died from Palestinian rocket fire and dozens have been wounded.

Is Ceasefire Possible for Israel and Hamas? Watch Video

Israel's decision to step up targeted attacks on leaders in Gaza on Sunday marked a new and risky phase of the operation, given the likelihood of civilian casualties in the crowded territory of 1.6 million Palestinians. The rising civilian toll was likely to intensify pressure on Israel to end the fighting. Hundreds of civilian casualties in an Israeli offensive in Gaza four years ago led to fierce international condemnation of Israel.

Israel launched the current offensive Wednesday after months of intensifying rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which continued despite the strikes. Overnight, the military said, aircraft targeted about 80 militant sites, including underground rocket-launching sites, smuggling tunnels and training bases, as well as command posts and weapons storage facilities located in buildings owned by militant commanders, the military said in a release. Aircraft and gunboats joined forces to attack police headquarters, and rocket squads were struck as they prepared to fire, the release said.

In all, 1,350 targets have been struck since the operation began on Wednesday.

International efforts to wrest a cease-fire from the two sides has picked up steam despite the escalated hostilities. The two sides have put forth widely divergent demands, but the failure to end the fighting could touch off an Israeli ground invasion, for which thousands of soldiers, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, have already been mobilized and dispatched to Gaza's border.

President Barack Obama said he was in touch with players across the region in hopes of halting the fighting. While defending Israel's right to defend itself against the rocket fire, he also warned of the risks the Jewish state would take if it were to expand its air assault into a ground war.

"If we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza, the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two-state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future," Obama said.

Read More..

Israel pounds Gaza as rocket fire wanes; talks in Egypt

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel bombed dozens of suspected guerrilla sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Monday and Palestinian rocket fire from the enclave dropped off as international efforts to broker a truce intensified.

Ten civilians and two field commanders from the Islamic Jihad faction were killed and at least 30 other Palestinians were hurt in the new air strikes, hospital officials said, bringing the death toll from six days of clashes in Gaza to 85.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was due to arrive in Cairo to weigh in on ceasefire efforts led by Egypt, which borders both Israel and Gaza and whose Islamist-rooted government has been hosting leaders of Hamas.

Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had also been to Cairo for truce talks, though a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government declined comment on the matter.

The Gaza flare-up, and Israel's signaling that it could soon escalate from the aerial bombings to a ground sweep of the cramped and impoverished enclave, have stoked the worries of world powers watching an already combustible region.

As Hamas and other Islamist factions spurn permanent peace with the Jewish state, mediated deals for each to hold fire unilaterally have been the only formula for stemming bloodshed in the past. But each side now placed the onus on the other.

Izzat Risheq, aide to Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal, wrote on Facebook that Hamas would enter a truce only after Israel "stops its aggression, ends its policy of targeted assassinations and lifts the blockade of Gaza".

Listing Israel's terms, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon wrote on Twitter: "If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."

Yaalon also said Israel wanted an end to Gaza guerrilla activity in the neighboring Egyptian Sinai, a desert peninsula where lawlessness has spread during Cairo's political crises.

WESTERN SUPPORT

Israel's operation has so far drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defense in the face of years of cross-border attacks, but there have also been growing appeals for an end to the hostilities.

Sympathy for Israel may wear thin as the Gaza toll mounts. On Sunday, 11 Palestinian civilians were apparently killed during an Israeli attack on a militant which brought a three-storey family home crashing down on them.

"I am deeply saddened by the reported deaths of more than ten members of the Dalu family... (and) by the continuing firing of rockets against Israeli towns, which have killed several Israeli civilians. I strongly urge the parties to cooperate with all efforts led by Egypt to reach an immediate ceasefire," Ban said before leaving for Egypt. He visits Israel on Tuesday.

At least 22 of the Gaza fatalities have been children.

Netanyahu said he had assured world leaders that Israel was doing its utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties in Gaza.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of Gaza, tanks, artillery and infantry have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border and military convoys moved on roads in the area. Israel has also authorized the call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that number.

A big, bloody rocket strike on Israelis might be enough for Netanyahu to give a green light for a ground offensive.

Three Israelis have been killed and dozens wounded in hundreds of salvoes since Wednesday. Some rockets reached as far as Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial capital, but were shot down by the country's air defense system.

As a precaution against the rocket interceptions endangering nearby Ben-Gurion International Airport, civil aviation authorities said on Monday new flight paths were being used. There was no indication takeoffs and landings at Ben-Gurion had been affected.

OVERNIGHT LULL

There was no rocket fire from Gaza between midnight and daybreak on Monday, the Israeli military said. It said a few cross-border launches followed in the early morning but there was no immediate word on casualties in southern Israel, where such salvoes usually set off sirens so residents can shelter.

Israel bombed some 80 sites in Gaza overnight, the military said, adding in a statement that targets included "under-ground rocket launching sites, terror tunnels and training bases" as well as "buildings owned by senior terrorist operatives".

Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force Hamas to stop rocket fire that has bedeviled Israeli border towns for years. The rockets now have greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem within their reach - a strategic weapon for Gaza's otherwise massively outgunned guerrillas.

The southern resort city of Eilat was apparently added to the list of targets when residents said they heard explosions on Sunday and Monday thought to be rockets, though there was no word on casualties or damage.

Eilat is thought to be well out of the range of any rocket in possession of Hamas or any other Gaza group. But militants have in the recent past fired rockets at Eilat and its surroundings, using Egypt's Sinai desert as a launch site.

Hamas and other groups in Gaza are sworn enemies of the Jewish state which they refuse to recognize and seek to eradicate, claiming all Israeli territory as rightfully theirs.

Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006 but a year later, after the collapse of a unity government under President Mahmoud Abbas the Islamist group seized control of Gaza in a brief and bloody civil war with forces loyal to Abbas.

Abbas then dismissed the Hamas government led by the group's leader Ismail Haniyeh but he refuses to recognize Abbas' authority and runs Gazan affairs.

While it is denounced as a terrorist organization in the West, Hamas enjoys widespread support in the Arab world, where Islamist parties are on the rise.

U.S.-backed Abbas and Fatah hold sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank from their seat of government in the town of Ramallah. The Palestinians seek to establish an independent state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.

(Writing by Ori Lewis and Dan Williams; Editing by Catherine Evans) 䴀ˆ

Read More..