Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Wednesday after three Israeli soldiers died in an ambush by Hamas fighters near a border fuel pipeline.Despite the heaviest fighting in more than a month, Israel allowed European-funded fuel into Gaza to keep its only power plant operational. "The fuel has started to go through," said the European Union official, referring to the Nahal Oz terminal, close to the scene of clashes in which the three soldiers died.
Fourteen Palestinians, at least nine of them civilians, were killed in separate Israeli attacks including air strikes, Hamas and medical officials said. They said the dead included three youths, a 67-year-old man, and at least four Hamas gunmen. Nahal Oz was shut down by Israel on April 9 after militants killed two Israeli civilians at the facility. Israel's Defence Ministry had said it would reopen the pipeline on Wednesday, but the latest attack had raised doubts fuel would flow again soon.
Kanan Abaid, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Energy Authority in the Gaza Strip, said before pumping resumed that the power plant only had enough fuel to operate until Saturday.
The EU official said the goal was to provide "as much (fuel) as can be possibly be pumped today" because the army had yet to tell the Europeans whether they would be allowed to make further deliveries to the plant on Thursday and Friday. The plant supplies power mainly to residents of Gaza City and its surrounding areas, home to 800,000 people.
Israeli officials accuse Hamas of preventing distribution of petrol and diesel in order to create a crisis to pressure Israel to ease a blockade it tightened after the Islamist group seized control of the territory in June. A strike by Gaza petrol station owners has been preventing distribution of limited Israeli supplies of gasoline and diesel to the general public.
In a development likely to stoke further anger in Israel, Hamas said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who planned to travel later in the day to Egypt, would meet in Cairo with two of its Gaza-based leaders,
Israeli leaders have shunned Carter over his contacts with Hamas, which has rejected Western demands to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing Israeli-Palestinian interim peace deals. Carter, who began a Middle East visit on Sunday, said in Arab East Jerusalem it would be counterproductive to exclude Hamas completely from "conversations or consultations".