WORLD / Middle East

Israeli forces attack Gaza power station
(AP)
Updated: 2006-06-28 19:01

Shalit was taken captive on Sunday during a Palestinian attack on a military post in southern Israel.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel would try to assassinate Khaled Mashaal, a Syrian-based Hamas leader who Israel thinks ordered the soldier's capture.

"He is definitely in our sights ... he is a target," Ramon told Army Radio. "Khaled Mashaal, as someone who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, is definitely a target."

Hamas militants and allied factions claimed responsibility for the attack on a southern military post on Sunday in which Shalit was captured and two soldiers were killed. The Palestinian government has called for the soldier's release, but Israel thinks the Syria-based leaders called the shots.

Abbas deplored the Israeli invasion in a statement.

"The president considers the aggression that targeted the civilian infrastructures to be collective punishment and a crime against humanity," the statement said. Abbas, it added, urged the U.S. and international Mideast negotiators to intervene to halt the operation.

Normally bustling streets in southern Gaza were eerily deserted midmorning, with people holed up inside their homes. A few children from nearby Bedouin encampments played in the streets, and two women in a donkey cart drove near the airport in Rafah.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt -- Gaza's main link to the outside world -- has been closed since the attack Sunday in which the Israeli soldier was taken captive. Usually, there is some activity in the area, even when the passage is closed, but on Wednesday, it was empty.

A small grocery near the long-closed airport at Rafah was open, but no one was inside except the owner, 45-year-old Allah Abu Jazr.

"All options are open, but let's hope this crisis will pass," Abu Jazr said. "We want the soldier to return home, just as we want our prisoners to come home."

Masked militants from various armed factions took up defensive positions around Gaza City in the northern part of the strip. Militants said they fired a rocket early Wednesday at the Israeli village of Nahal Oz, the Israeli forces' staging area, and at other Israeli targets.

Capt. Jacob Dallal, a military spokesman, said the army was prepared for a long operation, if necessary.

"We have a vast variety of military options available to us and everything is on the table," he said. At the same time, Israel is keeping diplomatic channels open during the Gaza operation with the hope that contacts could win the soldier's release, Dallal said.

The militants who seized Shalit have demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails in exchange for information about the captured soldier.

Nizar Rayan, a leading Hamas political figure, urged fighters on the Hamas radio station to take up arms and fight the Israeli troops in "the battle of liberating the prisoners."
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