Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today morning at the weekly cabinet session addressed the parents and families of IDF troops in the Gaza Strip and said that the ground operation was "unavoidable." "It is inconceivable that in a responsible and determined country, the home front would be a target for attacks" without its "powerful, daring and skilled army protecting it," the Prime Minister said at the beginning ofthe meeting in Tel Aviv.

Israeli army has claimed that its Air Force has killed senior Hamasactivist, Hussam Hamdan, who was in charge of Grad-type rocket launches into the southern Negev cities of Beersheba and Ofakim in a strike onKhan Yunis city in southern Gaza Strip.

Another senior Hamas activist, Muhammad Hilo, was also killed in the same airstrike. Hilo was in charge of the Hamas special forces in Khan Yunis. Hamas remained defiant, vowing the Gaza would become a "cemetery" for the Israeli army that would pay a "high price" for its invasion.

The US blocked an attempt in the powerful UN Security Council to express serious concern over the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza after eight days of air strikes and to call for an immediate ceasefire, asserting that it would "not be adhered to and have no underpinning for success."

In his weekly radio address yesterday, President George W. Bush called on Hamas "to turn away from terror" and rejected calls for a unilateral ceasefire that he said would allow the Islamists to continue hitting Israel with rockets. Israel s air campaign against Gaza began on December 27 after an unraveling, six-month truce expired.

Source : PTI