Click on Link to download or play MP3 file || 4 m 0s || 3.66 MB || Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Centre, www.imemc.org, for Tuesday June 10th, 2008.
Israeli army shelling in Gaza leaves three Palestinians killed, while the World Bank grants 40 million USD to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, these stories and more coming up stay tuned.
The News Cast
Palestinian sources reported that three Palestinian resistance fighters were killed during two separate Israeli attacks targeting Gaza City on Tuesday at midday.
The first attack targeted a group of resistance fighters gathered near a local hospital West of Gaza city; the Israeli shelling left 2 dead and one injured.
Meanwhile a resistance fighter was killed during an Israeli shelling targeting a group of fighter near a local factory also on Tuesday at midday.
The AL Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, said that all three are fighters from the brigades. The brigades added that its fighters managed to fire 18 home-made shells at Israeli targets on Tuesday.
One Palestinian man was killed on Monday late night when an underground tunnel collapsed on him in the city of Rafah; the tunnel was connecting the besieged Gaza Strip and Egyptian territories.
Medical sources identified the man as Palestinian 20-year old Fadi Khalifa. Earlier on Monday at midday, 27-year-old Majdi Khdair was killed in a similar tunnel collapse in the Salam neighborhood of located in Rafah city.
Israel claims that Palestinian resistance groups use tunnels to move weapons into the blockaded Gaza Strip, while locals say that those tunnels are used now to smuggle food and fuel into Gaza.
Israeli has placed the Palestinian coastal region under total siege in June 2007, leaving the 1.5 million Palestinians living there lacking food, medicine and fuel.
In the West Bank, Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister of the care taker government, signed an agreement with the World Bank on Tuesday in which 40 million USD will be transferred by the World Bank to the Palestinian Authority.
David Craig, World Bank Director for the West Bank and Gaza said that the grant falls in the framework of Fayyad’s Palestinian Reform and Development Plan (PRDP).
Fayyad, who was appointed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister in late June 2007, worked for the World Bank in Washington DC from 1987 to 1995.
The World Bank said that budget support is a central component of ongoing World Bank efforts to support the Fayyad plan that was originally presented to the international donor community in Paris in December 2007.
Conclusion
Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. You have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Ghassan Bannoura and George Rishmawi.
