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Hamas warns foreign airlines, declares truce talks over

By Agencies - Aug 20,2014 - Last updated at Aug 20,2014

The armed wing of Hamas warned foreign airlines on Wednesday against flying into Tel Aviv, threatening to step up its six-week conflict with Israel and declaring truce talks in Cairo over, Agence France-Presse reported.

"We are warning international airlines and press them to stop flying into Ben Gurion Airport from 6am (0300 GMT) Thursday," said Izzedine Al Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida in a televised speech.

Dressed in military fatigues with his face wrapped in a red and white chequered headscarf, he said Hamas was abandoning efforts to negotiate a durable ceasefire with Israel at Egyptian-brokered talks.

"We are calling on the Palestinian delegation to withdraw immediately from Cairo and not to return," said Abu Obeida in a speech broadcast on Hamas' Al Aqsa TV channel.

"There will be no return to talks after today and any move in this direction will never achieve any result," he added.

"The enemy lost a golden chance to reach a ceasefire with limited demands, for which it will pay after today."

The wife and seven-month-old son of the Qassam Brigades' commander Mohammed Deif were killed in an Israeli air strike on a building in Gaza City late on Tuesday, but Hamas said Deif was still alive.

"The Zionist enemy failed to assassinate general commander Abu Khaled," said the spokesman, using Deif's nom de guerre.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday Israel's military campaign in Gaza may be an extended operation and he accused the territory's Hamas rulers of using "savagery" against civilians just like Islamic State militants in Iraq, Reuters reported.

At a news conference in Tel Aviv, the Israeli premier said the Gaza war launched on July 8 “will be a continued campaign” aimed at restoring “calm and safety” to Israeli citizens.

Netanyahu said, however, that he saw a “new diplomatic horizon” ahead for Israel in the region, alluding to possible diplomacy with Palestinians ahead once the war was over.

The bloodshed pushed to 2,038 the number of Gazans killed in six weeks of the most violent confrontation between Israel and Hamas fighters since the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising (2000-2005).

Another 67 people have died on the Israeli side.

The UN says around three-quarters of the victims in Gaza are civilians. Sixty-four of the Israeli dead were soldiers.

Egyptian mediators scrambled for weeks to push the warring sides to agree a decisive end to the bloodshed, but their latest attempts collapsed on Tuesday when the fighting resumed.

Several thousand angry mourners joined the funeral procession for Deif’s 27-year-old wife and seven-month-old son in the Jabaliya refugee camp, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) and demanding revenge, according to AFP.

The mourners, firing Kalashnikovs, buried Widad and her son Ali, who died alongside another woman and a teenager when a missile slammed into a six-storey building in Gaza City late on Tuesday.

It was the first deadly air strike August 10.

Grief-stricken, Widad’s father Mustafa Harb Asfura carried his tiny grandson into the mosque then to the cemetery, his body wrapped in a white sheet exposing his white face with an injury to the eye.

“My daughter knew she would die a martyr when she decided to marry Mohammed Deif,” he told AFP.

In Israel, Interior Minister Gideon Saar justified the attack, calling Deif — who has escaped five previous assassination attempts — a legitimate target.

“Mohammed Deif deserves to die just like [the late Al Qaeda leader Osama] Bin Laden. He is an arch murderer and as long as we have an opportunity we will try to kill him,” Saar told army radio.

Among the 20 killed since the truce collapsed were nine children and three women, one of who was heavily-pregnant, said emergency services spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra.

That number includes the woman’s unborn baby, whom medics tried but ultimately failed to save, he said.

An army spokeswoman said Gaza fighters had fired 159 rockets, of which 119 hit southern and central Israel while another 27 were shot down. There have been no reports of casualties or damage.

The army had hit 92 targets across Gaza, she added. 

The violence left Egyptian truce efforts in tatters, with Netanyahu immediately ordering his delegation back from Cairo.

Israel has repeatedly refused to negotiate under fire.

“The rocket fire which broke the ceasefire also destroyed the foundation on which the talks in Cairo were based,” Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev told AFP on Wednesday.

Most of the Palestinian negotiators, including delegation head Azzam Al Ahmed, also left Cairo.

“We are leaving... but we have not pulled out of negotiations,” Ahmed told AFP, saying the Palestinians had handed a truce proposal to Israel and would not return to Cairo until they received an answer.

The Egyptian foreign ministry expressed “profound regret at the breach of the ceasefire” and said it was working to bring both sides back to the negotiating table.

And Arab League chief Nabil El Araby accused Israel of “blocking” all attempts to end the Gaza conflict.

“Israel is blocking any kind of agreement leading to calm” in Gaza, he told reporters.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas landed in Doha ahead of talks on Thursday with Hamas chief Khaled Mishaal for a meeting set up before the ceasefire collapsed, the official QNA news agency said.

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