- PARIS -- France sent a blunt
message to Israel Friday calling on it to halt its military operations
against the Palestinians after a Gaza Strip tank attack that added to an
already high toll of civilian deaths.
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- "We roundly deplore the recent incidents yesterday
in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli shells on a school and Palestinian
houses left at least eight dead, including two children," a spokeswoman
for the French Foreign Ministry, Cecile Pozzo di Borgo, said.
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- "We call the Israeli authorities to show better
restraint and to halt all military operations in the Palestinian territories,"
she told a media conference.
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- Pozzo di Borgo added that Paris saw Israel's incursions
as a violation of the Geneva conventions and a blow to international efforts
to restore some sort of stability to the region.
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- The Rafah incidents "result once again from the
Israeli Army's recourse to disproportionate military means against a civilian
Palestinian population in densely populated urban areas," she said.
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- http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=10/19/02&Cat=4&Num=002
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