Hamas chief in Cairo for talks

HAMAS chief Khaled Meshaal is in Cairo to confer on ending the Gaza conflict, but the Islamist group is reluctant to agree a ceasefire without guarantees Israel will honour it, a senior Hamas official says.

Meshaal was scheduled on Saturday to meet with Egypt's intelligence chief as well as Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, both visiting Cairo, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hamas, now its fourth day of conflict with Israel around the Gaza Strip, doubts that any country could guarantee terms for a ceasefire, he said.

"Through Egyptian mediation, we reached an understanding for a truce and it was broken in about 48 hours," he said of an Israeli air strike on Wednesday that killed the Hamas military chief, after rockets were fired from Gaza.

"Egypt now cannot say: 'I guarantee a truce'," he said, adding it would require a stronger effort by the "international community".

Hamas's last sustained conflict with Israel in December 2008-January 2009 ended with an Egyptian mediated truce that was meant to guarantee a loosening of Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Palestinian medics said 40 Gazans have been killed and more than 350 wounded since Israel launched an air campaign on the enclave on Wednesday. Three Israelis were killed by a Hamas rocket.

Since Israel's last major offensive on Gaza, the Arab Spring uprisings that brought an Islamist to power in Cairo have put more pressure on Israel to halt its campaign before it expands into a ground operation.

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UN to hold emergency talks on DR Congo

THE UN Security Council will meet in an emergency session after UN attack helicopters launched missions against rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, diplomats say.

France's UN mission announced on its Twitter account on Saturday that it had called for a meeting of the 15-nation body on the offensive launched by M23 rebels and that talks would start at 3.00pm (0700 AEDT Sunday).

The UN mission in DR Congo, MONUSCO, said in a statement that M23 rebels had launched an offensive with "heavy weapons" early on Saturday and that it had put peacekeepers into action as part of its mandate to "protect civilians".

"As part of this, 10 missions were carried out by its attack helicopters," the statement said.

The attack helicopters, provided by Ukraine, were put on standby on Friday after M23, former government troops who launched a mutiny in March, launched a surprise attack against the army just north of the Nord Kivu provincial capital of Goma.

The new fighting is concentrated around the town of Kibumba, about 25 kilometres north of Goma.

"MONUSCO is following the situation closely and will not tolerate any advance or action by M23 troops which would provoke panic in the civilians population," said the UN mission's statement.

MONUSCO said that M23, which UN experts have said is backed by Rwanda and Uganda, has "entire responsibility" for the new crisis.

The fighting since April has displaced tens of thousands of civilians and the UN said thousands more had arrived in camps this week.

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Arabs to demand Gaza ceasefire: diplomat

ARAB foreign ministers meeting in Cairo are expected to demand that Israel immediately halt its campaign in Gaza, and to discuss sending a delegation of ministers there, an Arab diplomat says.

The pan-Arab body announced on Wednesday its decision to hold emergency talks in response to Israeli air strikes in Gaza, which have killed 40 Gazans and wounded more than 350.

The Arab diplomats "will seek an immediate end to the Israeli aggression and stress their full support for the Gaza Strip", the diplomat said on Saturday.

They will also consider sending a delegation headed by Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi and other foreign ministers into Gaza "to stress support for the Palestinian people".

"The final statement will stress the importance of (Palestinian) national reconciliation as a pressing matter in the face of the aggression," the diplomat said.

The ministers will also "stress their support for Egyptian efforts to achieve a long-term truce between Israel and the Palestinian factions in Gaza".

Israel's harshest Gaza operation in four years began on Wednesday and was followed by fresh Israeli air strikes, as Palestinian militants inside Gaza responded with rocket fire.

Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 10 Palestinians and destroyed the Hamas government headquarters on Saturday as the Jewish state called up thousands more reservists for a possible ground war.

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Israel air raids kill 10, destroy Hamas HQ

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, Nov 17 AFP - Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed 10 Palestinians and destroyed the Hamas government headquarters as Israel called up thousands more reservists for a possible ground war.

After Palestinian militants fired rockets at the heart of Israel on Friday, Israeli warplanes carried out 180 air strikes overnight, Israel TV reported, with the strikes levelling the headquarters of the Hamas government.

Medics said 40 Gazans have been killed and more than 350 wounded since Israel launched an aerial campaign on the enclave on Wednesday afternoon, with at least five militants among the 10 people killed in Saturday's raids.

As the toll rose, sirens went off in Tel Aviv on Saturday for a third day running, sending people scuttling for cover, a day after a rocket crashed into the sea near the city centre, AFP correspondents said. The fire was claimed by Hamas's armed wing.

While Cairo was at the centre of efforts to halt the violence, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti appealed for a truce in a telephone conversation with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, Monti's office said.

He called for "a truce between the parties as soon as possible, to bring to an end the fighting and allow dialogue and peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to begin again".

Since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence, the Israeli army says militants have fired more than 600 rockets over the border, of which 404 hit and 230 were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system.

Over the same period, three Israelis have been killed and 18 injured, including 10 soldiers, with the army saying the air force had hit more than 830 targets in Gaza.

On Saturday, four Israeli soldiers and five civilians were hurt in separate rocket attacks on the south which hit a building and a car, police and the army said. Another militant group in Gaza, Islamic Jihad, claimed those attacks.

The military said it had sealed off all main roads around Gaza and declared a closed military zone, in the latest sign it was poised to launch its first ground offensive on the territory since the 22-day campaign over New Year 2009.

Overnight, the air force hit Gaza City, targeting Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya's headquarters, other government buildings, including the interior ministry and police compound, militant training facilities and "dozens of terror sites", it said.

Correspondents at the scene said the headquarters, which had been emptied over attack fears, was reduced to a pile of rubble but there were no reports of casualties.

Air strikes in southern Gaza, notably Rafah, killed six people while three more died in an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in central Gaza, medics said. Another man died of injuries sustained in a morning strike on Gaza City.

Saturday's violence came as Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem paid a brief solidarity visit to Gaza, a day after a similar mission by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil.

The world must stop Israel's "blatant aggression", Abdessalem told AFP on his arrival in Gaza City, where he visited the ruins of the cabinet building where a day earlier Haniya had received Qandil.

The Tunisian minister called on the Arab League to act to halt the aggression as it gathered for talks in Cairo.

Egypt and Turkey, meanwhile, put the onus on Israel to end the fighting, as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Cairo a day after Washington urged the two Muslim countries to pressure the Palestinians.

After a meeting with his counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr said they both agreed on "denouncing Israel's aggression and on the need to swiftly stop this aggression".

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Iran denies supplying rockets to Gaza

A SENIOR Iranian official has denied his country supplied the Fajr 5 missiles which Palestinian militants have been firing at Tel Aviv, Iran's Al-Alam television reports.

"We deny having delivered the Fajr 5 to the Palestinian resistance. The aim of such accusations is to portray the resistance as weak whereas it is perfectly capable of producing the arms it needs," said Allaeddine Boroujerdi, head of parliament's foreign affairs committee, on Saturday.

Islamic Jihad claimed its militants fired a Fajr 5 which crashed into the sea off Tel Aviv on Thursday, in the first such attack on the heart of Israel since Saddam Hussin's Iraqi regime fired Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf war.

Sirens went off in Tel Aviv again on Saturday for a third straight day, sending people scuttling for cover, a day after a rocket crashed into the Mediterranean near the city centre, AFP correspondents said.

The latest rocket was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome defence system.

The armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement, which rules Gaza and which like Islamic Jihad is supported by Tehran, claimed the latest Fajr 5 fire.

The Fajr 5 rocket has a far greater range than the home-produced Qassam rockets normally used by Palestinian militants in Gaza to target Israel, but neither are very accurate, defence analysts say.

Fajr 5 rockets can be fired from the back of a 6x6 truck to hit targets up to 75 kilometres away. This compares to a range of between four and 13 kilometres for the Qassam rockets.

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Ukraine's Tymoshenko in 'increased pain'

JAILED Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is in "increased pain" following her two-week hunger strike, but is too weak to receive full-scale treatment, her doctor says.

The former prime minister took her first sips of fruit juice late on Thursday following her prolonged refusal of food and treatment in protest over alleged fraud in polls won by the country's ruling party.

"The hunger strike process brought a rather negative effect on her pain symptoms, and the pain has now increased considerably," said German doctor Lutz Harms, who is in Kharkiv to treat Tymoshenko, on Friday.

"Currently she is beginning rehabilitation procedures, but the scope of these procedures will be very limited, because she is very weak ... and her body will not be responding to drugs very well," he told journalists outside the clinic in Kharkiv, where the 2004 Orange Revolution leader is being treated.

Tymoshenko has been since this summer in the hospital, where she was moved from her prison cell following complaints of back pain. She continues to serve out her controversial seven-year sentence for abuse of power while in office.

Observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe cited Tymoshenko's detention as one of the reasons why "democratic progress appears to have reversed" in Ukraine's October 28 parliamentary elections.

Tymoshenko has branded her prosecution a political vendetta on the part of her rival, President Viktor Yanukovych.

She is facing a second trial on new charges of embezzlement and tax evasion, but the hearings have been repeatedly delayed due to her health condition, with the new date set for November 23.

Tymoshenko decided to stop her hunger strike after consulting with German doctors, and Harms said on Friday her rehabilitation will take about two weeks.

Her conviction in October last year sharply worsened Ukraine's ties with the West and exposed President Yanukovych to accusations he was persecuting political opponents.

Tymoshenko insists she is a champion of Ukraine's integration with the European Union but critics have accused her of ruthless pragmatism, changing her beliefs with the political winds.

In a statement read out to journalists by her daughter Yevgenia Tymoshenko, the opposition leader said she would "continue fighting the corrupt regime of Yanukovych in every other way.

"I see that I have reached the goal for which I started the hunger strike," her statement said. "Nobody can consider this Verkhovna Rada (parliament) legitimate and democratically-elected anymore," she said.

Tymoshenko, serving a seven-year sentence for abuse of power while in office, is currently facing a second trial on new charges of embezzlement and tax evasion, but the hearings have been repeatedly delayed because of her health condition, with the new date set for November 23.

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US stocks dip in opening trade

US stocks have opened slightly lower after the Federal Reserve reported an unexpected decline in the nation's industrial production in October.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday was down 7.22 points (0.06 per cent) at 12,535.16.

The broad-market S&P 500 edged down 0.35 point (0.03 per cent) to 1,352.98, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite slipped 3.30 (0.12 per cent) to 2,833.63.

US industrial output fell 0.4 per cent in October largely because of the impact of the devastating superstorm Sandy, which blasted the industry-heavy northeast at the end of the month, the Fed said.

Most analysts expected an increase of 0.1 per cent. Weak for much of the year, industrial production had climbed by 0.2 per cent in September after a contraction in August.

On Thursday, stocks ended slightly lower in volatile, pulled down in part by Walmart's disappointing earnings.

The Dow lost 0.23 per cent, the S&P 500 lost 0.16 per cent and the Nasdaq slipped 0.35 per cent.

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