Israel has widened its air assault against the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers, hitting a mosque it said was hiding rockets, as Palestinians said the death toll from the five-day offensive had risen above 125.

Israel today announced a pause in its 12-day Gaza offensive to allow desperately-needed food, fuel and medicine into the shattered region.

A SMALL group of Jewish settlers attacked a delegation of British diplomats during a visit to the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday, the British Consulate said.

Israel should turn over Arab neighbourhoods in Jerusalem to the Palestinians as part of a peace deal with the moderate government of President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s deputy prime minister said today in some of the frankest remarks to date about what Israel might be willing to relinquish.

HAMAS militants posted an audio message yesterday from an Israeli soldier captured a year ago at an army base near the Gaza Strip, the first sign of life from the young serviceman since he was seized.

Hamas militants today released a recorded message from captured Israeli soldier Cpl Gilad Shalit, the first sign of life from the young serviceman since he was abducted exactly one year ago.

Israel’s Shin Bet security service tortures Palestinian prisoners during interrogations, defying a court ban on the practices, two Israeli human rights groups have claimed.

Israel’s army is investigating new allegations that troops used Palestinians as human shields during an operation in the West Bank city of Nablus.

The Israeli Supreme Court today decided not to issue a blanket ban against the targeted killing of Palestinian militants, ruling that some of the killings were legal under international law.

A 14-year-old girl was killed today in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip.

An Israeli missile that destroyed a vehicle in Gaza City killed three children as well as two Palestinian militants.

The Israeli parliament today passed a new law to force Palestinians who marry Israelis to live separate lives or move out of of the country.

Israel released 61 Palestinian detainees today in what it called a “confidence-building measure” as US Secretary of State Colin Powell encouraged leaders on both sides to move forward on a new blueprint for Mideast peace.

ISRAELI troops with tanks and combat helicopters moved into a Gaza refugee camp yesterday, capturing a leading member of Islamic Jihad’s military wing and sparking a two-hour gun battle that wounded four Palestinians and one soldier.

THE son of the first known Palestinian woman to be executed as an Israeli collaborator said yesterday gunmen tortured him until he invented a story about his mother’s involvement in a militant’s death.

ISRAELI soldiers destroyed the houses of two suspected West Bank militants yesterday, after troops killed a child and two attackers in separate incidents in the Gaza Strip.