'US drone' in fatal Pakistan raid

At least 27 people have been killed in a missile attack by an unmanned US drone in a tribal district of Pakistan, Pakistani officials have told Al Jazeera.

The raid destroyed a house in the northwestern town of Ladha, a base for Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban leader accused of plotting the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan, an official said.

"Around 50 to 60 mujahidin [fighters] have been living [at the site of the attack] for about a week. All of them were Uzbeks," a Taliban official said.

Pakistan intelligence agents are investigating the attack on the house in the South Waziristan region on Saturday.

Taliban fighters sealed off the site of the attack, preventing people from getting access, residents said.

Pakistan angered

The US has launched more than 30 missile attacks on Pakistani soil in recent months, ostensibly against al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked fighters.

More than 220 people were killed in the raids, according to a tally of reports from Pakistani intelligence agents, district government officials and residents.

Pakistan has been angered by the attacks, saying that innocent civilians have been killed and that Pakistani sovereignty has been infringed.

Maleeha Lohdi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the US, said that Pakistanis want the government to take a "robust position" to discourage Washington from launching the attacks which are destabilising the border region.

"I think that one of the biggest challenges that the Pakistani government faces, in the face of increasing drone predator strikes on Pakistani territory, is how to square the circle of what the US wants from Pakistan and what the people of Pakistan themselves want," she told Al Jazeera.

"I think it is very important for the new government ... to align itself with the people."

Tribal regions

Khalid Rahman, an analyst at the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad, said that neither the Taliban nor the Pakistani government were winning in Pakistan's tribal regions.

"The government is increasing its attacks on the Taliban but it has not been successful in controlling what is happening in the tribal regions," he told Al Jazeera.

"The Pakistani government is working under American pressure - that pressure is not in the Pakistani interest [which is] to go towards dialogue or a comprehensive package with those who are making trouble in the [tribal regions]."

A large number of Taliban fighters based in Pakistan's tribal region are thought to be those who fled Afghanistan during the US-led invasion in late 2001.

Many civilians living in Pakistan's tribal belt believe that the country's current problems with armed groups stem from Afghanistan, Rahman said.

"To treat the situation in Pakistan in isolation will not really solve the problems. Stability in Afghanistan would certainly help the situation in Pakistan," he said.

Barack Obama, the US president, said this week that he has no doubt that Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters are based in Pakistan's tribal region and the US wants the support of Islamabad in tackling the armed groups.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Shaky truce holds in Gaza Strip

Gazans take stock of destruction as Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters hold fire.

Palestinians have been venturing out to survey the devastation of Israel's war on Gaza as separate ceasefires called by Israel and the Palestinian fighters appeared to be holding.

Israeli troops and tanks were on the move on Monday, heading away from some key points in Gaza towards the border, but it remained unclear whether they would withdraw completely for the Palestinian territory.

Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips, reporting from the Israel-Gaza border, said Israeli military sources were saying that it was largely reservists who were leaving Gaza.

"Regular troops, by and large, are holding their positions and will remain alert, they will remain poised, to deal with any violation, as Israel sees it, of the Israeli ceasefire," he said.

"Given that the Israelis were always very unforthcoming about exactly how many troops were in Gaza at the height of the fighting, it is difficult for us to say how quickly they will leave."

Israeli army radio quoted unnamed military officials as saying that troops would pull out of Gaza by the time Barack Obama, the US president-elect, takes office on Tuesday.

'Hamas victory'

Hamas and other Palestinian factions have claimed victory in the 23-day conflict.
At least 1,300 people killed, including more than 400 children and more than 100 women. At least 5,300 Palestinians injured, including nearly 1,900 children and 800 women. At least 100,000 people forced from their homes

At least 13 Israelis killed, including three civilians
Israel had said the aim of its operations in Gaza was to cripple Hamas's ability to launch rockets into the south of the country.

However, in a televised news conference on Monday, Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, claimed their rocket-launching capacity had not been diminished, and threatened to renew fighting if Israeli forces did not withdraw.

"They [Israel] say they weakened Hamas. We assure you that what we have lost in this war is nothing compared to what we [still] have," the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades spokesman said.

The Israeli military said three rockets had landed in southern Israel since the Hamas-led truce announcement on Sunday.

Abu Obeida claimed only 48 Hamas fighters were among the 1,300 Palestinians killed in Israel's more than three-week assault. The Israeli military had claimed the figure was closer to 500.

He also reasserted that two Israeli soldiers had been captured early on in the fight, a claim which Israel denies.

Counting the cost

But the full price of the "victory" was only beginning to be revealed, as thousands of Gazans made their way back to previously inaccessible areas to find their homes and neighbourhoods devastated.
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, in Gaza City, reported sewage on the streets as Gazans sifted through rubble of what was previously their homes to recover bodies and salvage whatever they could.

"The WHO [World Health Organisation] has been warning people that with the bodies now several weeks old ... [and] sewage flowing over many of the areas because of the destruction that happened to the infrastructure, it is ripe for an outbreak of epidemics," he said.

Scores of bodies have been discovered in the rubble of destroyed buildings since the fighting ended.

"We have pulled out the bodies of 15 children and women from under their house," Abed Sharafi, an ambulance driver, said in the early hours of Monday.

"They were so badly decomposed that we couldn't distinguish boys from girls. Some had been there for 15 days."

Homes destroyed

Bulldozers cleared tonnes of rubble from the streets, while the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics estimated that more than 22,000 building have been damaged or destroyed.
"We don't have homes anymore. I don't have anything anymore," Najette Manah said as she searched the wreckage of her home in Beit Lahiya.

Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was preparing to visit the Gaza Strip amid the lull in violence, Israeli officials said.

"Ban is planning to begin his trip in Jerusalem and from there he will visit several UN sites in Gaza," Yossi Levy, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, told the AFP news agency.

Israel announced late on Saturday that it was unilaterally ending its offensive in Gaza.

Following that news, Hamas and several allied Palestinian factions announced on Sunday a conditional, one-week truce.

"We in the Palestinian resistance movements announce a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand that enemy forces withdraw in a week and open all the border crossings to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and basic goods," Mousa Abu Marzuk, the deputy leader of Hamas's political bureau, said.

Besides Hamas, the Palestinian factions joining the ceasefire included Islamic Jihad, al-Nidal, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and al-Saeqa.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Israel sends reservists into Gaza

Israel has begun sending reserve units into the Gaza Strip as the military continues to pound the territory for the 16th consecutive day.

The move came amid some of the most intense fighting since the ground offensive began on January 3, with Palestinian fighters putting up stiff resistance to the Israeli advance around Gaza City.

Israel has not specified how many extra troops it is sending in, but it called up tens of thousands of reservists two weeks ago after it launched the air, naval, and land bombardment of the territory.

"I can confirm that a few reserve units have entered Gaza to participate in the operation," major Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera.

"We are not talking about a massive amount of forces, rather a limited one to join in the fighting."

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from the Israel-Gaza border, said: "I think what we are seeing here is preparations for what the media, according to the Israelis, is calling stage three, which is moving troops into the towns and cities of Gaza.

"They have called up a number of reservists, but by no means all the reservists that have been put on standby, and moved them into Gaza.

"They are there, ready for if the word comes that stage three is to begin. If there is to be this massive push then the soldiers are there ready to act," he said.

Palestinian fears

Medical sources said that dozens of Palestinian fighters were killed in clashes on Sunday, taking the total number of Palestinian deaths since Israel began its war on the territory to 890, many of them women and children.
Almost 4,000 Palestinians have also been wounded since the beginning of the offensive.

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Gaza City, said that the Israeli manouevres had raised speculation that a full attack on targets in the city was being planned for the coming days.

Israeli tanks were positioned on the edge of the city to the north and east, while a column of tanks to the south advanced only to later pull back.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, told an Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday that the military had nearly completed the goals set for the war on Gaza.

"Israel is getting close to achieving the goals it set for itself," he said.

He told ministers that Israel had "dealt Hamas an unprecedented blow ... It will never be the same Hamas," Oved Yehezkel, the Israeli cabinet secretary, said.

The cabinet meeting had been expected to include discussion of a possible "third stage" of the offensive in which the military would enter Gaza's urban areas.

However, several Israeli officials suggested that the offensive could be drawing to a close after last week's UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

"The decision of the security council doesn't give us much leeway," Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister, told public radio.

"Thus it would seem that we are close to ending the ground operation and ending the operation altogether."

Military goals

Giroa Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, told Al Jazeera that there was a debate within the Israeli government and security establishment about what the goals of the operation should be at this stage.

"The main question is how to conclude and accomplish the missions," he said.
"As far as I can understand one of the reasons the military option might be expended is in order to give an Israeli solution to the situation."

Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli official, was expected to travel to Cairo in the coming days to discuss a plan to end the fighting after Hamas officials met Egyptian officials on Sunday.

The Israeli military onslaught has, so far, failed to achieve the stated aim of stopping Palestinian fighters from firing rockets into southern Israel.

At least 17 rockets had been fired across the border by mid-afternoon on Sunday, but failed to cause any casualties.

Thirteen Israelis have been killed since the military offensive began, including three civilians hit by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

Khaled Meshaal, the exiled political chief of Hamas, said Hamas would not accept any truce initiative while "we are still under attack".

"I address the Israelis and say to them; 'What have you achieved through this war you have supported? And you supported your leaders to conduct it,'" he said.

"You have achieved nothing but killing innocent children and leaving Gaza in a sea of blood."

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Gaza toll climbs amid fresh raids

Palestinian medics say that more than 280 people have been killed and more than 600 injured in continuing Israeli bombardment of the impoverished Gaza Strip.

A police station and a factory were among the targets reportedly hit on Sunday, after a mosque and the headquarters of al-Aqsa television had been struck overnight.

The Reuters news agency reported that at least one missile hit the offices of Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, but he was not in the building at the time.

The latest attacks came as Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, warned that the air raids could be followed by a major ground incursion into the Gaza Strip.

"We are ready for anything. If it's necessary to deploy ground forces to defend our citizens, we will do so," Barak's spokesman quoted him as saying on Sunday.

Israeli television has reported that hundreds of infantry and armoured forces were massing on the border of the territory and on Sunday it began to call up reservists to bolster its fighting strength.

UN call

The United Nations Security Council urged an immediate halt to all military activities in the Gaza Strip and called for the humanitarian crisis faced by Gaza's 1.5 million residents to be addressed.

Neven Jurica, Croatia's ambassador to the UN and president of the council, read out a non-binding statement on behalf of the 15-member body that called on the parties involved in the conflict "to stop immediately all military activities". The statement, however, did not mention either Israel or Hamas by name.

More than 230 targets have been hit with missiles fired from helicopter gunships and fighter jets since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on Saturday, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

"They include Hamas infrastructure like buildings, arms depots and rocket-launching zones," she said.

On Sunday, Israeli police said a Palestinian missile had hit near the town of Ashdod, more than 30km from the Gaza Strip. The attack would be the furthest inside Israel yet.

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Jerusalem, said that Israeli authorities were anticipating an increase in Palestinian rocket attacks.

"The homefront defence has drawn up action plans for people living within 30km of the Gaza Strip, people living in those areas have strict instructions to stay within range of a bomb shelter and not to gather outdoors in large groups," she said.

"Some defence officials are anticipating that up to 200 rockets a day could be fired from Gaza."

At least one Israeli was killed and six others wounded in retaliatory missile attacks by Palestinian fighters on Saturday.

'Bloodiest bloodbath'

Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, rejected the Israeli government's claims that the air raids were in self-defence.

"This is a bloodbath, the bloodiest bloodbath since 1967," he told Al Jazeera. "This is an attack on the civilian population of Gaza."

Israeli troops have reportedly been massing on the border of the Gaza Strip [AFP]

"They try to claim that this was done as a response to missiles, but they are denying the fact that the whole year not a single Israeli was killed by missiles. The first Israeli killed was only because of the Israeli invasion, the Israeli attack."

Many of the dead in Saturday's attacks were police officers, including Tawfiq Jabber, the Gaza chief of police.

Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, suggested that casualty figures put forward by the Palestinians were misleading and insisted that only Hamas targets had been hit.

"Hamas is using figures to attract public attention, media attention and for propaganda purposes," he told Al Jazeera.

"At the end of the day we are attacking Hamas strongholds ... No civilian targets are hit, it is very unfortunate that some civilians will be hit."

Hamas blamed

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and leader of the rival Fatah group, blamed Hamas for the violence.

"We talked to them [Hamas] and we told them 'please, we ask you, do not end the truce. Let the truce continue and not stop' so that we could have avoided what happened," he said after talks with his Egyptian counterpart.

A six-month truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip ended on December 19.

Hospitals, already suffering from shortages due to an 18-month blockade on the Gaza Strip, said they were struggling to cope with the number of injured, which included women and children.

One of the buildings hit on Sunday was reportedly a warehouse used to supply local pharmacies with medicines.

"This is going to make us unable to supply any of the local families that depend on us," Dr Hussam Abu Hashem, the owner, told local Hamas radio. "It's a war against human beings."
Source: Al Jazeer

Muslim woman defies male dominance

Amal Soliman, a 32-year-old Egyptian woman, has endured harassment, intimidation, and ridicule in the year since she applied for a job as the Muslim world's first mazouna, or female marriage registrar, but she says her victory has been worth the fight.
In late September, Soliman, who holds a Masters degree in Islamic Sharia law, broke into what has until now been an exclusively males-only club.
However, the Committee of Egyptian Mazouns, an all-male organisation, challenged Soliman's application saying the job would be inappropriate for a woman and voiced their opinion in a statement issued by the committee.
A marriage officer presides over a wedding (or divorce) ceremony, recites verses from the Quran and signs the official certificates making the union legally binding.
Al Jazeera recently spoke with Soliman shortly after she conducted her first wedding ceremony on October 25.

Al Jazeera: Why did you decide to apply for a position that has traditionally – and for centuries – been a male vocation?

Soliman: In 2007 one of the two marriage officers of my neighbourhood passed away, leaving behind a job opportunity.
For three months everyone wondered who would be able to replace Al Hajj Abou Mesalam and right before the deadline (October 2007) for applying I rushed over to the civil court in Zagazig, the heart of rural Egypt, to give in my application.
I had been interested in pursuing a doctorate degree in Islamic studies but also maintaining a flexible job that would allow me to spend time with my three children.
Legally, there is no reason why a woman can't do the job, and the Mufti (Islamic scholar and interpreter of Islamic law) said it was religiously acceptable as it is only an administrative position.
In October 2007, my husband and I formally submitted an application to the local family court clerk for the post of marriage officer.

Was your application accepted?

Soliman with her husband and children [EPA]
Well, I took my husband with me because I was afraid I would be made fun of, which I was.
When I applied the man at the desk laughed openly at me and said that is was just not possible.
He imagined I would go home and forget about it, but instead I argued and told him that I had studied Sharia Law and I know it is an administrative job.
Though the clerk refused to accept my submission, I turned to Ibrahim Darwish, head of the local magistrate in Zagazig for his opinion.
Darwish was puzzled; he said there was no precedent for this situation so he did not know what to say. I took that as a sign that there was a small window of opportunity.
I then consulted Khaled el-Shalkamy, the head judge of Zagazig's family court.
I told him it was my right to be nominee as I was extremely qualified.
I told him just to accept me and let the other people involved in the selection process do the rest.

Were there no other applicants for the job?

Actually, I was in competition with 10 other candidates, all men, but none of them held post-graduate degrees in Sharia law like I did.
So el-Shalkamy accepted my application.
On February 25, I couldn't hold back my tears as I stood in front of the local court and was appointed as my district's new mazouna.
But the battle was half-won. I would not be able to begin work as a mazouna until Mamdouh Marei, the Egyptian minister of justice, formally signed off and authorised my appointment.
But many males did not accept the idea that a woman could hold what has been a man's job and you were targeted in the media.
The chairman of the Committee of Egyptian Mazouns, Muhammad Abou Ayeeta, said "the Ministry [of Justice] should refuse the appointment, because it is unacceptable that women would work in this occupation."

How did you deal with the backlash?

Well, at first my optimism slowly started to fade as I saw so much opposition.
But there were two main reasons for the opposition I faced. Firstly, it is simply rooted in male chauvinism. These people believe the woman's place is firmly in her house.
The other group was comprised of uneducated people who have developed an image of women's role in Islam from television; usually based on the words of a sheikh with a turban on his head.
Arguments made against me claimed that a woman couldn't perform marriages because of menstruation, as religion prevents women from praying or entering a mosque during her monthly cycle.
Others claimed that it was inappropriate for a woman to sit amongst men during the signing of the marriage certificates, which is traditionally predominately a male gathering where the marriage officer sits directly between the groom and his father-in-law.

Did no religious authority or group support you?

Well, four months after contacting the Ministry of Justice and receiving no word, I contacted the National Council for Women for a louder voice and stronger backing.
Both my opponents and proponents were beginning to wonder if I would ever receive the approval of the ministry of justice.
From the first moment that my papers where accepted as a nominee, the national press caught wind of this unusual event.
A journalist in Al Akhbar, one of Egypt's leading newspapers, heard about the situation, and helped launch my cause as a national debate.
Eventually the news went global. I think the media was a catalyst and made my appointment go through faster than it would have.

It made me happy to have so much international coverage … Sometimes when I'm sitting alone I wonder if I'm dreaming. What is going on? Did we really pull this off?

I'm happy not just for me; I had always wanted to show the world Egypt's developments with regards to women rights and gender equality.

But you did not get ministry approval until September 27; why did it take the ministry so long?

Of course I was happy and relieved, but more importantly I regained my confidence when the minister finally signed my appointment. I had slowly started to doubt myself up to that point.
However, I now believe that the minister had to be cautious, as this case was the first of its kind.
But laws are not religion. We can develop them.
Source : Al Jazeera