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ISRAEL claims to have killed nearly 40 Palestinian militants since an offensive was launched in the Gaza Strip last week. Israeli officials said an air strike yesterday killed one Hamas militant and wounded three Palestinians as Israeli troops dug in across a swath of the northern Gaza Strip after a bloody day of fighting with Palestinian gunmen. "What is happening on Palestinian land is a crime against humanity," said the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, as he visited the wounded. "The Israeli killing machine must stop."The Israeli Army said an aircraft had opened fire yesterday on a group of four armed men close to the scene of the worst violence on Thursday, when 19 Palestinians and one soldier were killed. The father of the captured Israeli soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit called on the Government to consider releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his son, despite its refusal to negotiate with the captors. "Everything has a price," Noam Shalit said. "I don't think there will be some sort of move to free Gilad without a price. That's not the way it works in the Middle East."
A newspaper poll showed 82 per cent of Israelis believed the Government should assassinate Hamas leaders in response to the crisis. The poll showed 47 per cent were unhappy with the performance of the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. At the United Nations, Arab states asked the Security Council to demand Israel immediately withdraw from Gaza, but France and the US criticised their proposed resolution as unbalanced. The draft resolution, introduced by Qatar, condemned Israel's detention of dozens of Palestinian officials. "[The resolution] is not balanced enough," said the French envoy, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere. "We will propose amendments."