Date:28/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/28/stories/2008122855811100.htm

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One Israeli killed as Hamas begins retaliation

Atul Aneja

Wave of protests in the Arab world to Israeli raids

DEVASTATING ATTACKS: Children and a man wounded are seen in a hospital following Israeli air strikes in Gaza on Saturday. At right, a Palestinian grieves over the body of a member of the Hamas security force at the security headquarters. - PHOTOS: AP

DUBAI: The Palestinian group Hamas has begun its retaliation to Saturday’s wave of airstrikes by Israel by firing rockets which have killed one Israeli national and injured four.

Nearly 25 Qassam and longer range Grad rockets were fired into southern Israel on Saturday. The Palestinian response came after the death toll from Israeli air strikes in Gaza rose to 195. An estimated 300 persons were injured during the attacks, said Palestinian sources.

“Hamas will continue the resistance until the last drop of blood,” the group’s spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, told Gaza radio station. A Hamas spokesman had earlier broadcast a message for its fighters.

“We call on all units to avenge with force against the enemy,” he said.

A statement from Hamas’ ally in Gaza, Islamic Jihad, also called on “all fighters” to “respond to the Israeli slaughter.”

There has been a wave of protests in the Arab world as the news of the attacks spread.

In Lebanon, the militant group Hizbollah staged a huge rally in its Beirut stronghold of Dahiyeh.

Angry residents of the Ain el-Helwe, a Palestinian refugee camp in the Lebanese city of Sidon also demonstrated in large numbers. Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the U.N. headquarters in the Jordanian capital Amman, while protests were also held in Syria’s Al-Yarmouk camp, on the outskirts of Damascus.

The head of Hizbollah’s Executive Council Sayyed Hachem Safieddine expressed solidarity with Gaza residents. “You are not alone in this ordeal and the coming days will prove that the right that Gaza people are defending will obtain victory.”

His compared the situation to the Hizbollah’s 33-day war with Israel in July-August 2006. He said “the decision is American taken in the White House, the Zionist [Israeli] machine is executing and the collusion is Arabic that has paved for this aggression.”

Mr. Safieddine said at the rally that people of Gaza would achieve victory “as we did in 2006.”

Xinhua reports:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called for an emergency Arab summit .

“Syria follows, with deep concern, the brutal Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people in Gaza and stresses that what is going on is a heinous crime and convicted terrorist act.”