All Rights Go To Wwe
Nov. 3, 2006 - The Brothers of Destruction reunite for the first time in nearly four years against up-and-comers MVP & Mr. Kennedy.
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
FULL-LENGTH MATCH - SmackDown - The Undertaker & Kane Vs. MVP & Mr. Kennedy.
All Rights Go To Wwe
Nov. 3, 2006 - The Brothers of Destruction reunite for the first time in nearly four years against up-and-comers MVP & Mr. Kennedy.
Have parted ways with Hashmi: Imran Khan
#GNN - #ISLAMABAD: #Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan announced that from today (Sunday) he had parted ways with his elected party President Javed Hashmi.
“I am disappointed with Javed Hashmi,” Khan told protestors from atop his container.
Khan’s announcement came after Javed Hashmi said the PTI chairman made the decision to march towards the PM House after receiving a message from Sheikh Rasheed and Saifullah Niazi. During a news conference Hashmi further said that Imran Khan would be responsible if democracy was derailed.
Khan further announced that three PTI MNAs who had not submitted their resignations from Parliament were also expelled from the party.
Imran Khan reiterated that the PTI would not leave until Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigned. Imran rallied protesters to be prepared tonight. According to Khan he had heard that the police would be coming to arrest him and Dr Tahirul Qadri, adding that if the police came they would be ready for them.
Imran Khan further said two police officers had resigned after refusing to use force against protesters.
PTI resigns from NA, 3 provincial assemblies
#GNN - #ISLAMABAD: #Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Monday announced to resign from the National and three provincial assemblies.
PTI vice president Shah Mehmood Qureshi, while talking to media persons here said: “We are resigning from National Assembly, Punjab Assembly, Sindh Assembly, and Balochistan Assembly.”
He said, for the time being, his party is not resigning from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, as there is a coalition government in the province and the allies will have to be taken into confidence before making such a big decision.
Shah Mehmood said the decision to quit provincial cabinet of KP will be taken after holding consultations with the coalition partners.
(PTI) Has Decided To Resign From All The...
According to Geo News senior anchor Hamid Mir, the PTI’s stance as announced by its Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday did not go down well with the supporters of its ‘Azadi March’. Therefore, he said, the PTI leadership had to reach the decision to resign from assemblies.
On Sunday, the fourth day of PTI’s Azadi March in Islamabad, Imran Khan, while addressing his supporters, gave a two-day deadline to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down and also announced to launch a civil disobedience campaign with immediate effect.
He said from now on he would not pay taxes or utility bills and appealed the entire nation to do the same.
Javed Hashmi opposes decision
President PTI, Javed Hashmi vehemently opposed the decision of his party to quit NA and provincial assembly seats.
He said tendering of resignations will not lead to the holding of mid-term elections.
He said, for the time being, his party is not resigning from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, as there is a coalition government in the province and the allies will have to be taken into confidence before making such a big decision.
Shah Mehmood said the decision to quit provincial cabinet of KP will be taken after holding consultations with the coalition partners.
(PTI) Has Decided To Resign From All The...
According to Geo News senior anchor Hamid Mir, the PTI’s stance as announced by its Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday did not go down well with the supporters of its ‘Azadi March’. Therefore, he said, the PTI leadership had to reach the decision to resign from assemblies.
On Sunday, the fourth day of PTI’s Azadi March in Islamabad, Imran Khan, while addressing his supporters, gave a two-day deadline to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down and also announced to launch a civil disobedience campaign with immediate effect.
He said from now on he would not pay taxes or utility bills and appealed the entire nation to do the same.
Javed Hashmi opposes decision
President PTI, Javed Hashmi vehemently opposed the decision of his party to quit NA and provincial assembly seats.
He said tendering of resignations will not lead to the holding of mid-term elections.
Israel pounds #Gaza despite #international peace efforts
#GNN - #Israel #pounded #targets across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, saying no ceasefire was near as top U.S. and United Nations diplomats pursued talks on halting the fighting that has claimed more than 600 lives.
Gaza offensive enters third week by GNN
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held discussions in neighbouring Egypt, while U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and later with the Palestinian prime minister in the occupied West Bank.
However, there was no let-up in the fighting around Gaza, with plumes of black smoke spiralling into the sky, and Israeli shells raining down on the coastal Palestinian enclave.
Dealing a blow to Israel's economy already reeling from a spate of tourism cancellations, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took the rare step of banning U.S. carriers from flying to or from Ben-Gurion International Airport for at least 24 hours after a rocket fired from Gaza struck near the airport's fringes, injuring two people.
European airlines including Germany's Lufthansa, Air-France, Dutch airline KLM, Norwegian Air SAS and Turkish Airlines, said they were halting flights there too. Israel's flagship carrier El Al continued flights as usual.
Israel launched its offensive on July 8 to halt missile salvoes out of the Gaza Strip by Hamas, the dominant group in the coastal territory, which was angered by a crackdown on its supporters in the occupied West Bank and suffering economic hardship because of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
"A ceasefire is not near," said Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, viewed as the most dovish member of Netanyahu's inner security cabinet. "I see no light at the end of the tunnel," she told Israel's Army Radio.
EGYPTIAN INITIATIVE
Dispatched by U.S. President Barack Obama to the region to seek a ceasefire, Kerry met on Tuesday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri. "There is a framework ... to end the violence and that framework is the Egyptian initiative," Kerry said at a news conference with Shukri.
"For the sake of thousands of innocent families whose lives have been shaken and destroyed by this conflict, on all sides, we hope we can get there as soon as possible," he said.
"Hamas has a fundamental choice to make and it is a choice that will have a profound impact for the people of Gaza."
Egypt was key to securing an end to a previous bout of Gaza fighting in 2012, but the country's new leadership is openly hostile to Hamas. For its part, Hamas has already rejected Egypt's proposal this time around as insufficient."We hope (Kerry's) visit will result in a ceasefire that provides the necessary security for the Palestinian people and that we can commence to address the medium and long-term issues related to Gaza," Shukri said.
With the conflict entering its third week, the Palestinian death toll rose to 621, including nearly 100 children and many other civilians, Gaza health officials said.
The latest strikes killed a six-month-old infant, a 62-year-old man and three other men riding on motorcycles in southern Gaza, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said it had killed at least 183 militants.
Israel's casualties also mounted as the military announced the deaths of two more soldiers. That brought the number of army fatalities to 27, almost three times as many as were killed in the last ground invasion of Gaza in a 2008-2009 war.
Two Israeli civilians have also been killed by Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.
HUMANITARIAN TRUCE
Addressing reporters with Netanyahu at his side, U.N. chief Ban said: "My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting. Start talking. And take on the root causes of the conflict, so we are not back to the same situation in another six months or a year."
Kerry has said the United States would provide $47 million in humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip. He plans to stay in Cairo until Wednesday morning but has no set departure date from the region.
An Egyptian official who attended some of Kerry's meetings said Ban was working toward reaching a humanitarian truce, perhaps lasting for several days, to get aid into the territory.
"The sensitivities between Egypt and Hamas are what is halting a final inclusive ceasefire deal," the official said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed Fatah movement also proposed a formula for ending the fighting, calling for an immediate ceasefire followed by five days of negotiations, Palestinian official Azzam al-Ahmed said in Cairo.
Abbas said Palestinian "anger is great" against the Israeli offensive and pledged in his remarks from Ramallah to "go everywhere to stop the aggression and chase down all those who committed crimes against our people."
With Israeli shells and bombs hitting Gaza day and night, thousands of people have fled districts close to the border. The main U.N. agency in Gaza, UNRWA, said almost 102,000 people had taken shelter in 69 of its schools.
UNRWA said it found rockets hidden in a vacant Gaza school near two buildings housing refugees, in the second such instance of militants accused of storing weaponry in a school during the latest offensive.
An UNRWA statement said staff were removed from the building where the rockets were found adding that it "strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible".
ISRAEL IN NO HURRY
Israel has signalled it is in no hurry to achieve a truce before reaching its goal of crippling Hamas's militant infrastructure, including rocket arsenals and networks of tunnels threatening Israelis living along the Gaza frontier.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said Israel had eliminated about half of the tunnels Hamas had dug with the aim of infiltrating into Israel, and destroyed 30 to 40 percent of militants' rocket arsenals in Gaza.
Israel said Gaza militants had fired 2,160 rockets at Israel since the start of the offensive and about a fifth of them had been intercepted by the Iron Dome. Eighty-seven rockets were fired at Israel on Tuesday and 18 of them intercepted.
Hamas has said it will not cease hostilities until its demands are met, including that Israel and Egypt lift their blockade of Gaza and its 1.8 million people, and that Israel release several hundred Palestinians detained during a search last month for three Jewish teenagers later found dead. Israel blamed the killings on Hamas, and their deaths, along with the revenge slaying of a Palestinian teen, were factors in a flare-up of violence along the Israel-Gaza border last month that escalated into the current fighting. "The world must understand that Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and its heroism," deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a televised address on Monday. Livni said the Hamas demands were unacceptable to both Israel and Egypt.
In Israel, the military said it had identified the remains of six soldiers killed in an attack on their armoured vehicle in Gaza on Sunday and was trying to identify the seventh.
Prompting widespread celebrations in Gaza, Hamas's armed wing announced on Sunday that it had captured a soldier. It displayed a photo ID and army serial number of the man, but did not show any image of him in their hands.
The Israeli military believes it was impossible for anyone to have survived the direct hit on the armoured vehicle in which the missing man was travelling.
Israel has agreed to mass releases of Palestinian prisoners in the past to secure the freedom of captured soldiers, or even for the return of the bodies of its citizens.
(GNN)(AIP)(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Gaza, Arshad Mohammed, Shadia Nasralla and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Giles Elgood, Ruth Pitchford and Tom Heneghan)
Gaza offensive enters third week by GNN
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held discussions in neighbouring Egypt, while U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and later with the Palestinian prime minister in the occupied West Bank.
However, there was no let-up in the fighting around Gaza, with plumes of black smoke spiralling into the sky, and Israeli shells raining down on the coastal Palestinian enclave.
European airlines including Germany's Lufthansa, Air-France, Dutch airline KLM, Norwegian Air SAS and Turkish Airlines, said they were halting flights there too. Israel's flagship carrier El Al continued flights as usual.
Israel launched its offensive on July 8 to halt missile salvoes out of the Gaza Strip by Hamas, the dominant group in the coastal territory, which was angered by a crackdown on its supporters in the occupied West Bank and suffering economic hardship because of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
"A ceasefire is not near," said Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, viewed as the most dovish member of Netanyahu's inner security cabinet. "I see no light at the end of the tunnel," she told Israel's Army Radio.
EGYPTIAN INITIATIVE
Dispatched by U.S. President Barack Obama to the region to seek a ceasefire, Kerry met on Tuesday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri. "There is a framework ... to end the violence and that framework is the Egyptian initiative," Kerry said at a news conference with Shukri.
"For the sake of thousands of innocent families whose lives have been shaken and destroyed by this conflict, on all sides, we hope we can get there as soon as possible," he said.
"Hamas has a fundamental choice to make and it is a choice that will have a profound impact for the people of Gaza."
Egypt was key to securing an end to a previous bout of Gaza fighting in 2012, but the country's new leadership is openly hostile to Hamas. For its part, Hamas has already rejected Egypt's proposal this time around as insufficient."We hope (Kerry's) visit will result in a ceasefire that provides the necessary security for the Palestinian people and that we can commence to address the medium and long-term issues related to Gaza," Shukri said.
With the conflict entering its third week, the Palestinian death toll rose to 621, including nearly 100 children and many other civilians, Gaza health officials said.
The latest strikes killed a six-month-old infant, a 62-year-old man and three other men riding on motorcycles in southern Gaza, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said it had killed at least 183 militants.
Israel's casualties also mounted as the military announced the deaths of two more soldiers. That brought the number of army fatalities to 27, almost three times as many as were killed in the last ground invasion of Gaza in a 2008-2009 war.
Two Israeli civilians have also been killed by Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.
HUMANITARIAN TRUCE
Addressing reporters with Netanyahu at his side, U.N. chief Ban said: "My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting. Start talking. And take on the root causes of the conflict, so we are not back to the same situation in another six months or a year."
Kerry has said the United States would provide $47 million in humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip. He plans to stay in Cairo until Wednesday morning but has no set departure date from the region.
An Egyptian official who attended some of Kerry's meetings said Ban was working toward reaching a humanitarian truce, perhaps lasting for several days, to get aid into the territory.
"The sensitivities between Egypt and Hamas are what is halting a final inclusive ceasefire deal," the official said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed Fatah movement also proposed a formula for ending the fighting, calling for an immediate ceasefire followed by five days of negotiations, Palestinian official Azzam al-Ahmed said in Cairo.
Abbas said Palestinian "anger is great" against the Israeli offensive and pledged in his remarks from Ramallah to "go everywhere to stop the aggression and chase down all those who committed crimes against our people."
With Israeli shells and bombs hitting Gaza day and night, thousands of people have fled districts close to the border. The main U.N. agency in Gaza, UNRWA, said almost 102,000 people had taken shelter in 69 of its schools.
UNRWA said it found rockets hidden in a vacant Gaza school near two buildings housing refugees, in the second such instance of militants accused of storing weaponry in a school during the latest offensive.
An UNRWA statement said staff were removed from the building where the rockets were found adding that it "strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible".
ISRAEL IN NO HURRY
Israel has signalled it is in no hurry to achieve a truce before reaching its goal of crippling Hamas's militant infrastructure, including rocket arsenals and networks of tunnels threatening Israelis living along the Gaza frontier.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said Israel had eliminated about half of the tunnels Hamas had dug with the aim of infiltrating into Israel, and destroyed 30 to 40 percent of militants' rocket arsenals in Gaza.
Israel said Gaza militants had fired 2,160 rockets at Israel since the start of the offensive and about a fifth of them had been intercepted by the Iron Dome. Eighty-seven rockets were fired at Israel on Tuesday and 18 of them intercepted.
Hamas has said it will not cease hostilities until its demands are met, including that Israel and Egypt lift their blockade of Gaza and its 1.8 million people, and that Israel release several hundred Palestinians detained during a search last month for three Jewish teenagers later found dead. Israel blamed the killings on Hamas, and their deaths, along with the revenge slaying of a Palestinian teen, were factors in a flare-up of violence along the Israel-Gaza border last month that escalated into the current fighting. "The world must understand that Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and its heroism," deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a televised address on Monday. Livni said the Hamas demands were unacceptable to both Israel and Egypt.
In Israel, the military said it had identified the remains of six soldiers killed in an attack on their armoured vehicle in Gaza on Sunday and was trying to identify the seventh.
Prompting widespread celebrations in Gaza, Hamas's armed wing announced on Sunday that it had captured a soldier. It displayed a photo ID and army serial number of the man, but did not show any image of him in their hands.
The Israeli military believes it was impossible for anyone to have survived the direct hit on the armoured vehicle in which the missing man was travelling.
Israel has agreed to mass releases of Palestinian prisoners in the past to secure the freedom of captured soldiers, or even for the return of the bodies of its citizens.
(GNN)(AIP)(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Gaza, Arshad Mohammed, Shadia Nasralla and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Giles Elgood, Ruth Pitchford and Tom Heneghan)
Israel, Palestinians battle as Egyptian-proposed Gaza ceasefire collapses
(GNN) - Israel resumed air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after agreeing to an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire deal that failed to get Hamas militants to halt rocket attacks.
The week-old conflict seemed to be at a turning point, with Hamas defying Arab and Western calls to cease fire and Israel threatening to step up an offensive that could include an invasion of the densely populated enclave of 1.8 million.
Under a blueprint announced by Egypt - Gaza's neighbour and whose military-backed government has been at odds with Islamist Hamas - a mutual "de-escalation" was to have begun at 9 a.m. (0600 GMT), with hostilities ceasing within 12 hours.
Hamas' armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, rejected the ceasefire deal, a proposal that addressed in only general terms some of its key demands, and said its battle with Israel would "increase in ferocity and intensity".
But Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas political official who was in Cairo, said the movement, which is seeking a deal that would ease the Egyptian and Israeli border restrictions throttling Gaza's economy, had made no final decision on Cairo's proposal.
The Israeli military said that since the ceasefire deal was to have gone into effect, Hamas had fired 123 rockets at Israel, one killing a civilian - the first Israeli fatality in the fighting.
A Palestinian civilian was killed in an air strike in Khan Younis, raising the death toll in the Gaza Strip in eight days of fighting to 188, including at least 150 civilians, among them 31 children, according to Gaza medical officials.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted 20 of the Hamas projectiles, including two over the Tel Aviv area, and the rest caused no damage or casualties.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack against Israel's commercial capital, which has been targeted frequently since the war began, as well as for the rocket that killed the Israeli man along the border.
Six hours after implementation of the truce was to have begun, and citing the persistent salvoes, Israel resumed attacks in Gaza. The military said it targeted at least 20 of Hamas's hidden rocket launchers, tunnels and weapons storage facilities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks late on Tuesday that Israel had no choice but to "expand and intensify" its campaign on Hamas, though he did not specifically mention the possibility of a ground incursion.
The Iron Dome has shot down most projectiles liable to hit Israeli towns and cities, but the rocket salvoes have made a rush to shelters a daily routine for hundreds of thousands of people across the country.
The surge in hostilities over the past week was prompted by the murder last month of three Jewish seminary students in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the revenge killing on July 2 of a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem. Israel said on Monday three Jews in police custody had confessed to killing the Palestinian.
KERRY CONDEMNS "BRAZEN" HAMAS ROCKET FIRE
Sirens sounded on Tuesday in areas up to 130 km (80 miles) north of the Gaza Strip.
Speaking in Vienna, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry supported Israel: "I cannot condemn strongly enough the actions of Hamas in so brazenly firing rockets, in multiple numbers, in the face of a goodwill effort (to secure) a ceasefire."
Netanyahu, whose security cabinet voted 6-2 earlier on Tuesday to accept the truce, had cautioned that Israel would respond strongly if rockets continued to fly.
He said he expected the "full support from the responsible members of the international community" for any intensification of Israeli attacks in response to Hamas spurning a truce.
Earlier, Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said that demands the movement has made must be met before it lays down its weapons.
Other Palestinian militant groups - Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine - also said they had not yet agreed to the Egyptian offer.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who reached an agreement with Hamas in April that led to the formation of a unity government last month, called for acceptance of the proposal, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
Abbas was due in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Palestinian leader's spokesman said.
The Arab League, at a meeting on Monday, also welcomed the ceasefire plan.
ISRAELI GROUND ASSAULT POSSIBLE
Israel had mobilised tens of thousands of troops for a threatened Gaza invasion if the rocket volleys persisted.
"We still have the possibility of going in, under cabinet authority, and putting an end to (the rockets)," Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence official, said.
Under the proposal announced by Egypt's Foreign Ministry, high-level delegations from Israel and the Palestinian factions would hold separate talks in Cairo within 48 hours to consolidate the ceasefire with "confidence-building measures".
Hamas leaders have said any deal must include an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza and a recommitment to a truce reached in an eight-day war there in 2012.
Hamas also wants Egypt to ease curbs at its Rafah crossing with Gaza imposed after the military ousted President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist, a year ago.
The Egyptian proposal made no mention of Rafah or when restrictions might be eased.
Hamas has faced a cash crisis and Gaza's economic hardship has deepened as a result of Egypt's destruction of cross-border smuggling tunnels. Egyptian authorities also accuse Hamas of assisting anti-government Islamist militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, an allegation the Palestinian group denies.
Hamas has said it also wants the release of hundreds of its activists arrested in the West Bank while Israel searched for the three missing teenagers.
The proposed truce also made no mention of the detainees.
Adnan Abu Amer, a political analyst in Gaza, said it appeared that Egypt had deliberately ensured that their initiative would fall short of Hamas's demands, in an attempt bid to make the movement look rejectionist.
"Egypt stood by Israel's side, as if it was trying to punish Hamas and give Israel some time to pursue its military campaign," he said.
(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Noah Browning in Gaza and Michael Georgy and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Dan Williams Editing by Angus MacSwan)
The week-old conflict seemed to be at a turning point, with Hamas defying Arab and Western calls to cease fire and Israel threatening to step up an offensive that could include an invasion of the densely populated enclave of 1.8 million.
Under a blueprint announced by Egypt - Gaza's neighbour and whose military-backed government has been at odds with Islamist Hamas - a mutual "de-escalation" was to have begun at 9 a.m. (0600 GMT), with hostilities ceasing within 12 hours.
Hamas' armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, rejected the ceasefire deal, a proposal that addressed in only general terms some of its key demands, and said its battle with Israel would "increase in ferocity and intensity".
But Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas political official who was in Cairo, said the movement, which is seeking a deal that would ease the Egyptian and Israeli border restrictions throttling Gaza's economy, had made no final decision on Cairo's proposal.
The Israeli military said that since the ceasefire deal was to have gone into effect, Hamas had fired 123 rockets at Israel, one killing a civilian - the first Israeli fatality in the fighting.
A Palestinian civilian was killed in an air strike in Khan Younis, raising the death toll in the Gaza Strip in eight days of fighting to 188, including at least 150 civilians, among them 31 children, according to Gaza medical officials.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted 20 of the Hamas projectiles, including two over the Tel Aviv area, and the rest caused no damage or casualties.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack against Israel's commercial capital, which has been targeted frequently since the war began, as well as for the rocket that killed the Israeli man along the border.
Six hours after implementation of the truce was to have begun, and citing the persistent salvoes, Israel resumed attacks in Gaza. The military said it targeted at least 20 of Hamas's hidden rocket launchers, tunnels and weapons storage facilities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks late on Tuesday that Israel had no choice but to "expand and intensify" its campaign on Hamas, though he did not specifically mention the possibility of a ground incursion.
The Iron Dome has shot down most projectiles liable to hit Israeli towns and cities, but the rocket salvoes have made a rush to shelters a daily routine for hundreds of thousands of people across the country.
The surge in hostilities over the past week was prompted by the murder last month of three Jewish seminary students in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the revenge killing on July 2 of a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem. Israel said on Monday three Jews in police custody had confessed to killing the Palestinian.
KERRY CONDEMNS "BRAZEN" HAMAS ROCKET FIRE
Sirens sounded on Tuesday in areas up to 130 km (80 miles) north of the Gaza Strip.
Speaking in Vienna, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry supported Israel: "I cannot condemn strongly enough the actions of Hamas in so brazenly firing rockets, in multiple numbers, in the face of a goodwill effort (to secure) a ceasefire."
Netanyahu, whose security cabinet voted 6-2 earlier on Tuesday to accept the truce, had cautioned that Israel would respond strongly if rockets continued to fly.
He said he expected the "full support from the responsible members of the international community" for any intensification of Israeli attacks in response to Hamas spurning a truce.
Earlier, Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said that demands the movement has made must be met before it lays down its weapons.
Other Palestinian militant groups - Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine - also said they had not yet agreed to the Egyptian offer.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who reached an agreement with Hamas in April that led to the formation of a unity government last month, called for acceptance of the proposal, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
Abbas was due in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Palestinian leader's spokesman said.
The Arab League, at a meeting on Monday, also welcomed the ceasefire plan.
ISRAELI GROUND ASSAULT POSSIBLE
Israel had mobilised tens of thousands of troops for a threatened Gaza invasion if the rocket volleys persisted.
"We still have the possibility of going in, under cabinet authority, and putting an end to (the rockets)," Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence official, said.
Under the proposal announced by Egypt's Foreign Ministry, high-level delegations from Israel and the Palestinian factions would hold separate talks in Cairo within 48 hours to consolidate the ceasefire with "confidence-building measures".
Hamas leaders have said any deal must include an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza and a recommitment to a truce reached in an eight-day war there in 2012.
Hamas also wants Egypt to ease curbs at its Rafah crossing with Gaza imposed after the military ousted President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist, a year ago.
The Egyptian proposal made no mention of Rafah or when restrictions might be eased.
Hamas has faced a cash crisis and Gaza's economic hardship has deepened as a result of Egypt's destruction of cross-border smuggling tunnels. Egyptian authorities also accuse Hamas of assisting anti-government Islamist militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, an allegation the Palestinian group denies.
Hamas has said it also wants the release of hundreds of its activists arrested in the West Bank while Israel searched for the three missing teenagers.
The proposed truce also made no mention of the detainees.
Adnan Abu Amer, a political analyst in Gaza, said it appeared that Egypt had deliberately ensured that their initiative would fall short of Hamas's demands, in an attempt bid to make the movement look rejectionist.
"Egypt stood by Israel's side, as if it was trying to punish Hamas and give Israel some time to pursue its military campaign," he said.
(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Noah Browning in Gaza and Michael Georgy and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Dan Williams Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Govt, media, army must work together for country: Nawaz
 |
| By Murtaza Ali Shah May 02, 2014 thenews |
“We all have to join hands to move forward. Be it the media or Pakistan’s armed forces, the government or the security institutions, we all will have to work together. Pakistan is surrounded by crises and we have tried to put it back on track since coming to power,” he said.
The prime minister was asked about the Jang and Geo appeal to him and the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani. It was feared that justice, fairplay and impartiality could not be expected from a dysfunctional and weak body like Pemra and that the allegations levelled by the Ministry of Defence were so defamatory, scandalous and serious that an independent Supreme Court Commission should be formed to inquire into these allegations.
The premier said that the Judicial Commission was set up by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on his request to look into various aspects of the attack on senior anchor Hamid Mir. “A commission comprising three judges has been formed; let the commission complete its work to find out the facts.”
Nawaz Sharif appealed to all sides to focus their efforts on Pakistan’s betterment. He said that Pakistan’s industry had halted but now it was running two to three shifts and production was increasing.
“I believe that we have to resolve these matters. We should make matters easy and resolve issues amicably. Pakistan is at such a stage where it faces many difficulties,” the premier said.
He said that it was due to his economic policies that Pakistan would get more than $30 billion of investment in the next a few years.
“This is unprecedented investment, mainly from Chinese and also Pakistani investors. This will boost Pakistan’s energy sector. Pakistan will become a corridor for investment and growth in the region.
We have to understand that almost 3 billion people live in this region. There is so much we can gain and our nation can benefit through our policies,” he said adding that the future of the world lay in this region.
He stressed: “We should not entangle ourselves in these issues. We shall not be distracted.
Video : Judicial Commission to probe Hamid Mir attack: PM
