Ramallah (ANTARA News) – The Palestinian government led by Salam Fayyad blamed the international community on Wednesday for bloodily Israeli raids in the Palestinian territories.
“We can`t exempt the international community from its responsibilities in any way,” said Information Minister Riyadh al-Maliki.
“The Palestinian territories lay under the occupation and, according to the international law, the international community shoulders the responsibility,” he added.
Al-Maliki said the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has asked the Middle East peace Quartet, comprising the United States, the European Union, Russia and the UN, to intervene and urge Israel to calm down.
Some 19 Palestinians, including 13 Hamas fighters, were killed and 25 others wounded in the Israeli army offensive in eastern Gaza City on Tuesday, the bloodiest day since Gaza in the grip of Hamas.
Three other civilians were the latest casualties on Wednesday when an Israeli air strike targeting a car exploded near them.
Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 but used to send troops to the volatile coastal enclave under the pretext of curbing Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli communities near Gaza.
The military wing of Hamas launched 21 home-made rockets on Israeli targets outside Gaza Strip early Wednesday in response to an Israeli offensive in Gaza which left at least 17 dead.
In successive statements sent to the press, Hamas claimed responsibility on the rocket salvos which mostly targeted Sderot town, one kilometer to the northeast of Gaza Strip, and several settlements in the same range.
According to Hamas` Ezz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, 65 rockets and 75 mortar shells were fired from Gaza Strip since Tuesday. “Our shelling against the Israeli settlement is a message to the enemy that we can create the same level of fear,” one of the statements said.
A final statistic from the Palestinian health ministry revealed that 19 Palestinians, including 13 Hamas fighters, were killed and 25 wounded in an Israeli army offensive in eastern Gaza city on Tuesday. Three children and a woman were among the wounded people.
Meanwhile, four Palestinians were hurt in two Israeli strikes in northern Gaza Strip this morning.
According to Mou`awia Hassanein, chief of emergency at the health ministry, an artillery shelling moderately wounded two people in Beit Hanoun and an air strike on a car in Jabaliya also moderately wounded the other two, Xinhua reported.(*)