Middle East:Thousands of Palestinians marched in Gaza yesterday for the funerals of 11 people, including nine militants from the ruling Hamas, who were killed in an Israeli raid into the central Gaza Strip a day earlier.
The Israeli army said it had concluded an incursion into central Gaza near the Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps and had pulled its forces out overnight. Local witnesses said the troops had left the area.
Troops with tanks entered Gaza on Thursday and killed armed members of the Islamist Hamas movement that seized control of the coastal enclave last month, as well as a member of another militant group and a man medical staff said was a civilian.
Thousands of people marched in the Bureij refugee camp and gunmen fired rifles into the air, vowing revenge.
"This blood will only increase our determination to chase the enemy and to strike it and resist by all our might until the last drop of our blood," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Russia hopes the quartet of international powers trying to revive Middle East peace talks will meet again on July 16th, Itar-Tass quoted Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as saying yesterday.
The meeting would be the first since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas named an emergency cabinet to replace the Hamas-Fatah unity government.
"We hope that a meeting of the Middle East Quartet will take place on July 16th," Mr Lavrov said. He also said he hoped the quartet would definitely meet in the Middle East before the end of the month, although he did not specify where.
The quartet comprises Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations.
Israeli-Palestinian talks have been stalled for seven years. Washington wants to relaunch statehood talks with Mr Abbas, who opposes Hamas, in the occupied West Bank.
- (Reuters)
