Hamas and Israel agree to ceasefire: sources

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt on the eighth day of intensive Israeli fire on the Gaza Strip and militant rocket attacks out of the enclave, Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said.

First word of the truce came from a Palestinian official who has knowledge of the negotiations in Cairo, where U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also pursuing peace efforts.

Asked whether a ceasefire deal had been reached, an Egyptian official in Cairo said: "Yes, and Egypt will announce it."

Egyptian state TV had earlier said a news conference would be broadcast from President Mohamed Mursi's palace shortly.

Israeli sources said Israel had agreed to a truce, but would not lift its blockade of the Palestinian territory, which is run by the Islamist Hamas movement.

All the sources declined to be named or to give further details of the arrangements hammered out in Cairo.

More than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed in the fighting that began last Wednesday.

The ceasefire, if confirmed, was forged despite a bus bomb explosion that wounded 15 Israelis in Tel Aviv earlier in the day and despite more Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

After talks in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Clinton held a second meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before travelling to Egypt for discussions with Mursi, whose country has led mediation efforts.

In Tel Aviv, targeted by rockets from Gaza that either did not hit the city or were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome interceptor system, 15 people were wounded when a bus was blown up near the Defence Ministry and military headquarters.

The blast, which police said was caused by a bomb placed on the vehicle, touched off celebratory gunfire from militants in Gaza and had threatened to complicate truce efforts. It was the first serious bombing in Israel's commercial capital since 2006.

In Gaza, Israel struck more than 100 targets, including a cluster of Hamas government buildings, in attacks that medical officials said killed 10 people, among them a 2-year-old boy.

Israel's best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper had reported an emerging outline of a ceasefire agreement that called for Egypt to announce a 72-hour ceasefire followed by further talks on long-term understandings.

Under the proposed document, which the newspaper said neither party would be required to sign, Israel would hold its fire, end attacks against top militants and promise to examine ways to ease its blockade of Gaza, controlled by Hamas Islamists who do not recognize the Jewish state's right to exist.

Hamas, the report said, would pledge not to strike any Israeli target and ensure other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip also stop their attacks.

Israel has carried out more than 1,500 strikes since the offensive began with the killing of a top Hamas commander and with declared aim of deterring Hamas from launching rocket attacks that have long disrupted life in its southern towns.

Medical officials in Gaza said 146 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, including 36 children, have been killed in Israel's offensive. Nearly 1,400 rockets have been fired into Israel, killing four civilians and a soldier, the military said.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo)

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China agrees to buy from Thai rice mountain

BANGKOK: China pledged Wednesday to buy rice from Thailand's growing mountain of unsold stocks, during a visit by Premier Wen Jiabao, officials said.

The memorandum of understanding, which did not specify the size or value of the exports, was part of an agreement between Wen and his Thai counterpart Yingluck Shinawatra to expand economic ties between the two countries.

"There's no precise timeframe or quantity because China did not want to be specific," said Thai government spokesman Tosaporn Sererak.

As a first step, 10 Chinese companies signed eight contracts to buy a total of 260,000 tonnes of rice, he said.

A controversial scheme introduced by Yingluck to boost farmer incomes has hit the competitiveness of Thai rice shipments.

The kingdom, which is set to lose its rank as the world's top rice exporter this year, produces about 20 million tonnes of the grain annually on average, about half of which is normally sold overseas.

This year, however, exports are expected to reach only about 6.5 million tonnes, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

The government says it is confident it can find buyers on world markets at a price that will raise the living standards of its farmers.

During Wen's visit, Thailand also invited Chinese investors to participate in projects including the Dawei deep sea port being jointly developed with Myanmar as well as in areas such as rubber processing, flood prevention and high-speed rail.

- AFP/fa

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Show mercy to Sarabjit: Justice Katju to Pakistan

NEW DELHI: Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju has once again appealed to the president and the prime minister of Pakistan to release Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh who is on death row for over two decades.

Katju's appeal came on a day when 26/11 attack convict Ajmal Kasab was hanged in Pune following rejection of his mercy plea by President Pranab Mukherjee.

"You must have heard that Ajmal Kasab has been hanged in India. I wish to respectfully point out to you that this case is totally different from that of Sarabjit Singh who has been on death row in Pakistan for 21 years.

"About Kasab, there is no doubt about his guilt as he was caught red handed. However, there is great doubt about the guilt of Sarabjit Singh. So, the two cases are not similar," Katju said in a letter to the Pakistan high commissioner to India Salman Bashir. He asked Bashir to convey his views to the Pakistan president and the prime minister.

Noting that he had pleaded for Sarabjit's release in his four previous letters, Katju said, "I earnestly request you to pardon him and send him back to India".

He said though there were no doubts that courts there have convicted Sarabjit, there were "serious flaws" in the prosecution version.

Katju said Sarabjit's name was not even in the FIR related to the Lahore bomb blast in 1990 for which he has been convicted. He said the main prosecution witness Shaukat Salim later retracted his statement and said it was given under police pressure.

As regards his alleged confession, the PCI Chairman said Sarabjit's own version was that he had illegally gone to Pakistan for doing liquor trade and was arrested there and falsely implicated in the bomb blast case.

" ... He has already spent 21 years in death row when he does not know when he would be hanged. This is enough to drive one mad. I sincerely urge you to show mercy and exercise your power of pardon in his case," Katju said.

The Pakistani high commissioner replied to Justice Katju's message assuring him that it would be conveyed to Islamabad.

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US abortions fall 5 pct, biggest drop in a decade

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. abortions fell 5 percent during the Great Recession in the biggest one-year decrease in at least a decade, according to government figures released Wednesday.

The reason for the decline wasn't clear, but some experts said it may be due to better use of birth control during tough economic times. Their theory is that some women believe they can't afford to get pregnant.

"They stick to straight and narrow ... and they are more careful about birth control," said Elizabeth Ananat, a Duke University assistant professor of public policy and economics who has researched abortions.

While many states have aggressively restricted access to abortion, most of those laws were adopted in the past two years and are not believed to have played a role in the decline.

Abortions have been dropping slightly over much of the past decade. But before this latest report, they seemed to have leveled off.

The new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that both the number and rate of abortions fell 5 percent in 2009, the most recent statistics available from most states.

Nearly all states report abortion numbers to the federal government, but it's voluntary. A few states — including California, which has the largest population and largest number of abortion providers — don't send in data. Experts believe there are more than 1 million abortions performed nationwide each year, but because of the incomplete reporting, the CDC had reports of about 785,000 in 2009.

For the sake of consistency, the CDC focused on the numbers from 43 states and two cities — those that have been sending in data without interruption for at least 10 years. The researchers found that abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age fell from about 16 in 2008 to roughly 15 in 2009. That translates to nearly 38,000 fewer abortions in one year.

Mississippi had the lowest abortion rate, at 4 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age. The state also had only a couple of abortion providers, and has the nation's highest teen birth rate. New York was highest, with abortion rates roughly eight times higher than Mississippi's. New York is second only to California in number of abortion providers.

Nationally since 2000, the number of reported abortions has dropped overall by about 6 percent and the abortion rate has fallen 7 percent, but the figures essentially leveled off for a few of those years.

By all accounts, contraception is playing a role in lowering the numbers.

Some cite a government study released earlier this year suggesting that about 60 percent of teenage girls who have sex use the most effective kinds of contraception, including the pill and patch. That's up from the mid-1990s, when fewer than half were using the best kinds.

Experts also pointed to the growing use of IUDs. The IUD, or intrauterine device, is a T-shaped plastic sperm-killer that a doctor inserts into a woman's uterus. A Guttmacher Institute study earlier this year showed that IUD use among sexually active women on birth control rose from under 3 percent in 2002 to more than 8 percent in 2009.

IUDs essentially prevent "user error," said Rachel Jones, a Guttmacher researcher.

Ananat said another factor for the abortion decline may be the growing use of the morning-after pill, a form of emergency contraception that has been increasingly easier to get. It came onto the market in 1999 and in 2006 was approved for non-prescription sale to women 18 and older. In 2009 the age was lowered to 17.

Underlying all this may be the economy, which was in recession from December 2007 until June 2009. But well afterward, polls have shown most Americans remained worried about anemic hiring, a depressed housing market and other problems.

You might think a bad economy would lead to more abortions by women who are struggling. However, John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health, said: "The economy seems to be having a fundamental effect on pregnancies, not abortions."

More findings from the CDC report:

—The majority of abortions are performed by the eighth week of pregnancy, when the fetus is about the size of a lima bean.

—White women had the lowest abortion rate, at about 8.5 abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age; the rate for black women was about four times that. The rate for Hispanic women was about 19 per 1,000.

—About 85 percent of those who got abortions were unmarried.

—The CDC identified 12 abortion-related deaths in 2009.

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Cease-Fire Reached in Israel-Hamas Conflict in Gaza

A bomb exploded on an Israeli bus near the nation's military headquarters in Tel Aviv, wounding at least 10 people, Israeli officials said today.

The bus exploded about noon local time Wednesday in one of the city's busiest areas, near the Tel Aviv museum. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said authorities were investigating whether the bomb had been planted and left on the bus or whether it was the work of a suicide bomber. This is the first terror attack in Israel since 2006.

Upon landing in Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement condemning the attack.

"The United States strongly condemns this terrorist attack and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the people of Israel. As I arrive in Cairo, I am closely monitoring reports from Tel Aviv, and we will stay in close contact with Prime Minister Netanyahu's team. The United States stands ready to provide any assistance that Israel requires," she said.

Overnight, the violence between Israel and the neighboring Gaza Strip continued as Israeli aircraft pounded Gaza with dozens of strikes, hitting government ministries, underground tunnels, a banker's empty villa and a Hamas-linked media office. Gaza health officials said there were no deaths or injuries.

Clinton on Mideast Ceasefire: 'America's Commitment to Israel's Security Is Rock Solid' Watch Video

The Israeli Defense Force said they've now destroyed 50 underground rocket launching sites in Gaza. The IDF also said that two rockets were fired from Gaza toward densely populated areas in Israel, but were intercepted by the "Iron Dome" missile shield.

In Gaza at least four strikes within seconds of each other pulverized a complex of government ministries the size of a city block, rattling nearby buildings and shattering windows. Hours later, clouds of acrid dust still hung over the area and smoke still rose from the rubble.

In downtown Gaza City, another strike leveled the empty, two-story home of a well-known banker and buried a police car parked nearby in rubble.

Clinton met with Palestinian President Abbas in Ramallah early Wednesday to try to help broker a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip to end a week of tit-for-tat missile and rocket fire.

Israel and the Hamas militant group seemed to edge closer to a ceasefire Tuesday to end a weeklong Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, but after a day of furious diplomatic efforts, a deal remained elusive and fighting raged on both sides of the border.

Israeli officials told ABC News that a window of opportunity for a deal could close, if Hamas refuses to agree to a long-term ceasefire. That ceasefire would be measured in years, not months. Hamas is demanding that Israel loosen its iron grip on Gaza's borders and ease its maritime blockade.

On Tuesday, Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for more than two hours behind closed doors, saying she sought to "de-escalate the situation in Gaza." Clinton hinted it would take some time to finally reach an agreement.

The meeting came amid statements from Hamas earlier in the day that a ceasefire would soon be announced.
Netanyahu said he would prefer to use "diplomatic means" to find a solution to the fighting, but that Israel would take "whatever actions necessary" to defend its people.

Clinton relayed a message from President Obama, reinforcing America's commitment to Israel's security and calling for an end to the rockets coming from "terrorist organizations in Gaza."

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Hamas says Gaza truce agreed, Israel says no deal yet

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Hamas official said on Tuesday Egypt had brokered a Gaza ceasefire deal that would go into effect within hours, but a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "we're not there yet".

"An agreement for calm has been reached. It will be declared at 9 o'clock (1900 GMT) and go into effect at midnight (2200 GMT)," Hamas official Ayman Taha told Reuters from Cairo, where intensive efforts have been under way to end seven days of fighting.

Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev told Reuters the announcement was premature and Israeli military operations in Gaza, territory run by Hamas Islamists, would continue in parallel with diplomacy.

"We're not there yet," Regev said on CNN. "The ball's still in play."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was heading to the region from Asia and was expected in Jerusalem late on Tuesday to meet Netanyahu.

Both Israel and the United States have said they preferred a diplomatic solution to the Gaza crisis to a possible Israeli ground operation in the densely-populated enclave of 1.7 million Palestinians.

"No country would tolerate rocket attacks against its cities and against its civilians. Israel cannot tolerate such attacks," Netanyahu said with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who arrived in Jerusalem from talks in Cairo, at his side.

"If a long-term solution can be put in place through diplomatic means, then Israel would be a willing partner to such a solution," he said.

"But if stronger military action proves necessary to stop the constant barrage of rockets, Israel will do what is necessary to defend our people," said Netanyahu, who is favored to win a January general election.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Monday that Israel must halt its military action in the Gaza Strip and lift the blockade of the Palestinian territory in exchange for a truce.

Hours before the Hamas official said an agreement had been clinched, Egypt's state media quoted Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi as saying "that the farce of Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip will end on Tuesday"

Mursi said, according to the reports, that "efforts to conclude a truce between the Palestinian and Israeli sides will produce positive results in the next few hours".

Israel pressed on with air strikes and Palestinian rockets flashed across the border on Tuesday.

Israel's military on Tuesday targeted about 100 sites in Gaza, including ammunition stores and the Gaza headquarters of the National Islamic Bank. Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry said six Palestinians were killed.

Israeli police said more than 150 rockets were fired from Gaza by late afternoon, many of them intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome system. Ten people were wounded in Israel, the military and an ambulance service said.

Medical officials in Gaza said 126 Palestinians have died in a week of fighting, the majority of them civilians, including 27 children.

Three Israelis died last week when a rocket from Gaza struck their house.

HAMAS TARGETS JERUSALEM

In an attack claimed in Gaza by Hamas's armed wing, a longer-range rocket targeted Jerusalem on Tuesday for the second time since Israel launched the air offensive with the declared aim of deterring Palestinian militants from launching rocket salvoes that have plagued its south for years.

The rocket, which fell harmlessly in the occupied West Bank, triggered warning sirens in the holy city about the time Ban arrived in Jerusalem for truce discussions.

In the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Hamas executed six alleged collaborators, whom a security source quoted by the Hamas Aqsa radio said "were caught red-handed" with "filming equipment to take footage of positions". The radio said they were shot.

A delegation of nine Arab ministers, led by the Egyptian foreign minister, visited Gaza in a further signal of heightened Arab solidarity with the Palestinians.

Fortified by the ascendancy of fellow Islamists in Egypt and elsewhere, and courted by Sunni Arab leaders in the Gulf keen to draw the Palestinian group away from old ties to Shi'ite Iran, Hamas has tested its room for maneuver, as well as longer-range rockets that have also reached the Tel Aviv metropolis.

Egypt, Gaza's other neighbor and the biggest Arab nation, has been a key player in efforts to end the most serious fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants since a three-week Israeli invasion of the enclave in the winter of 2008-9.

The ousting of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the election of Mursi is part of a dramatic reshaping of the Middle East wrought by Arab uprisings and now affecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mursi, whose Muslim Brotherhood was mentor to the founders of Hamas, on Monday took a call from Obama, who told him Hamas must stop rocket fire into Israel - effectively endorsing Israel's stated aim in launching the offensive last week. Obama also said he regretted civilian deaths - which have been predominantly among the Palestinians.

Mursi has warned Netanyahu of serious consequences from an invasion of the kind that killed more than 1,400 people in Gaza four years ago. But he has been careful not to alienate Israel, with whom Egypt's former military rulers signed a peace treaty in 1979, or Washington, a major aid donor to Egypt.

Addressing troops training in southern Israel, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said: "Hamas will not disappear but the memory of this experience will remain with it for a very long time and this is what will restore deterrence."

But he said: "Quiet has not yet been achieved and so we are continuing (the offensive) ... there are also diplomatic contacts -- ignore that, you are here so that if the order for action must be given - you will act."

Fighting Israel, whose right to exist Hamas refuses to recognize, is popular with many Palestinians and has kept the movement competitive with the secular Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who remains in the West Bank after losing Gaza to his Islamist rival in a civil war five years ago.

"Hamas and the others, they're our sons and our brothers, we're fingers on the same hand," said 55-year-old Faraj al-Sawafir, whose home was blasted by Israeli forces. "They fight for us and are martyred, they take losses and we sacrifice too."

Along Israel's sandy, fenced-off border with the Gaza Strip, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments awaiting any orders to go in. Some 45,000 reserve troops have been called up since the offensive was launched.

Israel's shekel rose on Tuesday for a second straight session while Tel Aviv shares gained for a third day in a row on what dealers attributed to investor expectations that a ceasefire deal was imminent.

(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad in Cairo, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Bernanke warns about fiscal cliff, spending cutbacks

WASHINGTON: US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warned Tuesday that the looming 'fiscal cliff' tax hikes and spending cuts "pose a substantial threat" to the country's economic recovery.

With government leaders locked in crunch talks on avoiding the cliff and slashing the budget deficit, Bernanke also said that the rising cuts to federal government spending were already holding back economic growth.

"Congress and the administration will need to protect the economy from the full brunt of the severe fiscal tightening at the beginning of next year that is built into current law -- the so-called fiscal cliff," the US central bank chief said in a speech in New York.

"The realization of all of the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that make up the fiscal cliff, absent offsetting changes, would pose a substantial threat to the recovery," he said.

"Indeed, by the reckoning of the Congressional Budget Office and that of many outside observers, a fiscal shock of that size would send the economy toppling back into recession."

He said the Fed already views growth as disappointingly slow and troubled by threats from the eurozone crisis, slow job creation and the reticence of banks to loosen lending standards -- which Bernanke said is holding back recovery in the housing sector.

On top of that, he said, "the phasing-out of earlier stimulus programs and policy actions to reduce the federal budget deficit have led federal fiscal policy to begin restraining GDP growth."

"Indeed, under almost any plausible scenario, next year the drag from federal fiscal policy on GDP growth will outweigh the positive effects on growth from fiscal expansion at the state and local level."

- AFP/fa

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P Chidambaram feels Congress has advantage in Karnataka

BANGALORE: Union finance minister P Chidambaram feels Congress has a great opportunity to capture power in the forthcoming assembly elections in Karnataka.

Addressing the party office-bearers at KPCC office here on Tuesday, he said the split in the BJP (former CM B S Yeddyurappa's decision to quit the BJP) and other problems had provided a perfect platform for the Congress to emerge victorious.

He asked the Congress leaders to focus on the SCs, STs, minorities, OBCs and women, the traditional vote bank of the party. This was former PM Indira Gandhi's message. Our party represents all sections of the society,'' he said.

Directing the party men to prepare for the polls, he said: The BJP government has no moral right to continue in office, which they assumed through 'Operation Lotus.''

Chidambaram urged Congress leaders to concentrate more on ensuring that credit flow reaches the neglected sections, including the minorities. In case of minorities, the credit flow is just 7.5 per cent, though the national average is 13.87 per cent.

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New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason that making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

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Spokesman: Gaza Ceasefire to Be Announced

A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel will be announced tonight, almost a week after the assassination of Hamas' top military commander led to the worst violence between Gaza and Israel in four years.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told ABC News the news would be announced at 8 p.m. in Cairo (1 p.m. ET), where Egypt has been trying to broker a peace deal. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian mediator would make the announcement, Barhoum said. Earlier, an Islamic Jihad website reported that the ceasefire would go into effect at 9 p.m. local time.

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Israeli newspaper Haaretz also reported that a ceasefire would begin tonight, citing senior Israeli officials.

The news comes just hours before American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lands in Israel for discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas about the fighting.

As the news broke, Israeli missiles continued to explode in Gaza while sirens sounded in Israel, signalling incoming rocket fire from Gaza.

Gazans streamed out of northern neighborhoods during the afternoon after the Israel Defense Forces dropped leaflets telling residents to evacuate before dark. Scared Palestinians poured into Gaza City, cars and trucks piled high with belongings, many heading to schools for shelter.

There have been 126 Palestinian deaths in six days of fighting, just under half were civilians. Three Israelis were killed last Thursday when a rocket slammed into their apartment.

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