95 Palestinian fighters killed in Gaza war

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:07:18 GMT

A Palestinian mourns next to the bodies of three of his four children and wife who were killed along with 42 other people in an Israeli attack on a UN-run school on January 7. The casualties of the Gaza war were mostly civilian. A Palestinian human rights group has revealed that only 95 resistance fighters were killed in the 23-day Israeli offensive into Gaza. From the 1194 Gazans officially registered as killed in Israeli attacks from December 27 to January 17, a whopping 1099 were civilians, the Gaza-based Palestinian center for human rights reported on Sunday. Only 95 of those killed were resistance fighters. Israel unleashed its Operation Cast Lead on Gaza on December 27 allegedly to halt Hamas from targeting Israel and to destroy the Palestinian resistance group. The 19th day of the Gaza carnage saw Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni state an objective different from the one echelons in Tel Aviv has previously announced. Livni claimed that despite the assertions of many officials in Tel Aviv, Operation Cast Lead "was never about destroying Hamas". "Our aim was to restore our deterrence capability. They will think twice before they dare to fire the next rocket at Israel," she explained. After 23 days of fighting, Israel announced a unilateral truce without having achieved any of the objectives announced for the attack on the strip. The Israeli onslaught on Gaza has cost the Palestinian economy at least $1.6 billion. A governmental report on the war revealed on Monday that Israel reduced some 4,000 residential buildings to rubble and damaged 16,000 other houses during the conflict. Since the cessation of the hostilities, at least 100 bodies have been recovered from the rubbles. The number of those killed in Israeli attacks has been put at around 1,300, according to the latest statistics. Nearly 6,000 Gazans have been injured in the attacks.