Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM - Less than a week before Israeli voters pick a new leader, the candidate most involved in negotiations with the Palestinians is on the defensive over newly reported details of an interim peace accord offered months ago by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the standard bearer of Olmert's centrist Kadima Party, was already trailing in the polls before the disclosures last week prompted the hawkish front-runner to accuse her of agreeing to "surrender" parts of Jerusalem for an independent Palestinian state.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- At least six Palestinians were killed and more than a hundred wounded yesterday when a mass rally marking the third anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, ended in armed clashes between the rival factions of Hamas and Fatah. All of the dead and most of the wounded were Fatah supporters who had been taking part in the rally, according to doctors at two Gaza hospitals. Tens of thousands of Gaza residents had turned out to honor Arafat, the founder of the Fatah movement, in the largest show of support for the mainstream Palestinian organization since the Islamic group Hamas seized control of the territory last June.

JERUSALEM -- Seizing key roads and military compounds, and forcing the surrender of hundreds of their Fatah rivals, Hamas gunmen armed with rifles, mortars and grenades made substantial progress yesterday toward their apparent goal of conquering the entire Gaza Strip. Such rapid military progress by the highly organized and disciplined Islamic militant group raises the question of what a definitive Hamas victory in Gaza would mean for the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Middle East as a whole.

JERUSALEM -- Leaders of rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas will meet today in a new venue, but they confront the same obstacles to a power-sharing arrangement that have torpedoed past negotiations. The two sides gather in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in what could be a final attempt to form a unity government aimed at ending their yearlong power struggle and breaking the Western aid embargo imposed after Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006. Stakes are high. The talks come after a new spate of factional clashes in the Gaza Strip that left more than two dozen Palestinians dead and dimmed hopes of resolving the deadlock through peaceful negotiations.

BUSINESS DOW +79.81 13,556.53 NASDAQ +19.07 2558.45 S&P +10.00 1,522.75 SUN INDEX +0.23 350.05 MARYLAND 120 city principals warned The Baltimore school system sent letters to about 120 principals threatening them with disciplinary action, including termination, if their schools fail to provide a complete set of records for each student by the end of this month. pg 1A Police unravel shooting Two men whom police identified as Morgan State University students had a third student shoot them in the legs this week as a ploy to avoid a fraternity initiation process, authorities said yesterday.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The Palestinian interior minister quit in frustration yesterday over a surge in factional violence in Gaza that has cast the future of the Palestinian power-sharing government into doubt. After barely more than a month on the job, Hani Kawasmeh said he was stepping down because neither side of the factional divide, Fatah or Hamas, would give him the power necessary to integrate competing security agencies into a unified force capable of establishing order in the Gaza Strip.

The last Middle East envoy resigned the post after about a year. Once the Islamic militant group Hamas swept the Palestinian elections in January 2006 and mediator James Wolfensohn's United States-led sponsors blocked all aid to the Palestinian Authority, the former World Bank president saw little hope of reviving Palestinian society as it became more impoverished, and he saw no chance to forge a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians....

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Hamas forces blew up or captured three more security compounds yesterday from outgunned Fatah defenders who surrendered by the dozens as the militant Islamic movement expanded its control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas battered Fatah's four main compounds with mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons fire. Both Palestinian factions fired wildly from high-rise rooftops, and Hamas turned a mosque into a grenade-launching base. By late yesterday, Hamas controlled nearly all of the densely populated coastal territory outside this sprawling capital city.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Fatah gunmen took aim at Hamas rivals in the West Bank yesterday, storming the Hamas-led parliament and ransacking offices of the Islamist group amid fears that last week's fighting in the Gaza Strip could trigger a wider reprisal campaign here. No deaths were reported during a series of incidents around the West Bank, which came despite Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to rein in militants affiliated with his Fatah party. Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank, but its forces were overpowered in the Gaza fighting, leaving Hamas in sole control of the seaside strip of land.

JERUSALEM -- An early-morning rocket attack from the Gaza Strip that wounded about 40 Israeli soldiers at an army base triggered calls in Israel for a strong military response yesterday, but officials said a large-scale offensive is unlikely. The injury toll was the highest in Israel from a single Palestinian rocket attack. The militant groups Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the strike that hit a training base at Zikim, north of the Gaza-Israel border.

JERUSALEM -The split screen seemed to capture Israel's mood of frustration over its setbacks in recent years. On one side, television viewers saw the somber face of Ehud Olmert as he addressed them yesterday evening for perhaps the last time as prime minister. His message: Marathon efforts to win the release of a captured soldier had failed. The other side showed the soldier's dejected parents as they listened from a tent outside Olmert's residence. The tent had been pitched by advocates of a prisoner exchange with the soldier's Palestinian captors, amid high expectations of a deal before the Israeli leader leaves office in the coming days.

In her first visit to the Middle East as the United State's chief diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finds herself in the same position as her recent predecessors. She is defending Israel's right to protect itself against Hamas-launched rocket attacks and offering financial aid to Palestinians under the condition that it won't fall into the "wrong hands," a reference to the Islamic militants in control of the bomb-ravaged Gaza Strip. The intended beneficiary of America's $900 million reconstruction pledge is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who needs to make inroads in the Hamas-governed strip to shift the balance of power among Palestinians in his favor - and perhaps toward a resumption of peace talks.

JERUSALEM - Less than a week before Israeli voters pick a new leader, the candidate most involved in negotiations with the Palestinians is on the defensive over newly reported details of an interim peace accord offered months ago by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the standard bearer of Olmert's centrist Kadima Party, was already trailing in the polls before the disclosures last week prompted the hawkish front-runner to accuse her of agreeing to "surrender" parts of Jerusalem for an independent Palestinian state.

Iraqi provincial elections see 50 percent turnout BAGHDAD: Just more than half of Iraq's 15 million registered voters cast ballots in weekend provincial elections, with turnout as low as 40 percent in at least one province, but Iraqi and international officials insisted yesterday that they were satisfied with the participation. U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker characterized the turnout as "large," and Iraq's top election official called it the most important election to take place since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert defended yesterday his country's 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip and pledged to defend the military against international calls for an investigation of potential war crimes. "The soldiers and commanders who were sent on missions in Gaza must know that they are safe from various tribunals and that the State of Israel will assist them on this issue and defend them," Olmert said before his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, in comments released by the government.

It's no coincidence that Israeli troops halted their devastating strikes on the Gaza Strip and began withdrawing from the Palestinian enclave the weekend before Barack Obama's inaugural festivities. Politics took precedence over military goals in deference to America's 44th president. But the underlying causes of Israel's three-week-old war against Hamas militants remain. They are at the center of the region's problems and Israel's fight for its future. Helping resolve this decades-old conflict falls now to President Obama.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - As residents of the Gaza Strip continued to sift through the rubble and mourn their dead, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon toured the seaside Palestinian enclave yesterday and declared himself "deeply grieved by what I have seen today." Ban entered Gaza from Israel in a convoy of armored vehicles. Speaking to reporters in front of the smoldering remains of a U.N. food warehouse set ablaze last week by an Israeli tank shell, a somber Ban said he had witnessed "heartbreaking" scenes of destruction.

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip - Uniformed police officers returned to the streets of Gaza yesterday with machine guns in hand as Hamas sought to reassert control over the battered enclave. "Hamas emerged from this battle with its head held high," said Hamad Ruqb, a Hamas official in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. "Every Israeli attack only increases our support." As Israeli tanks and soldiers continued their withdrawal, residents began to assess the damage. In addition to a death toll of more than 1,300, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimated infrastructure and economic losses at almost $2 billion, with 14 percent of the buildings in Gaza destroyed.

Israeli aircraft pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip yesterday and scattered leaflets warning of an escalation in attacks, but there was no sign that its forces had begun a major advance on the militant group's urban strongholds. A senior Hamas commander and seven members of a Palestinian family were among those killed on the 15th day of Israel's thundering assault, which also damaged a hospital. Palestinian militants fired 15 rockets into Israel, wounding three people. Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting sputtered as Egypt rebuffed a proposal to place international forces along its border to help prevent weapons-smuggling into Gaza.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Shells fired by Israeli forces hit a United Nations school yesterday, killing at least 30 Palestinians who had sought shelter there on a day when Israeli forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip and a Hamas rocket struck a town about 20 miles south of Tel Aviv. Street battles rumbled across the Palestinian enclave and bloodshed showed no signs of ebbing, despite renewed calls by Arab and European leaders for the U.N. Security Council to demand a cease-fire. International pressure on Israel intensified after Palestinian medical officials reported that 75 Gazans were killed yesterday as Israeli forces swept into more densely populated areas.