Palestine

Mideast hostage crisis deepens

{(Mideast hostage crisis deepens)}



The crisis surrounding the kidnapping of an Israeli army corporal by Palestinian militants has deepened with fresh demands by the hostagetakers and a claim that a second soldier has been seized.



The three Palestinian militant groups that captured Corporal Gilad Shalit six days ago in the Gaza Strip demanded that Israel free 1,OOO prisoners.



Washington's UN ambassador widened the diplomatic fallout of the crisis, accusing Syria of being partially responsible for the latest wave of violence, saying it was harboring militants from the Hamas movement.



"We would not be where we are right now if it were not for Syria's support and harboring of terrorists," John Bolton said.



Israeli public television reported late Friday that the kidnapped Shalit was alive and had been visited by a doctor who treated injuries he sustained before the abduction during a June 25 Palestinian attack on Gaza's southern border.



The three Palestinian groups responsible-- the Popular Resistance Committees, the armed wing of the governing Hamas and the Army of Islam -- demanded the release of "1,000 Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and other prisoners".



Saturday's statement did not explicitly specify that the releases were conditions for securing the freedom of 19-year-old Shalit.



The three groups said all the detained leaders of Palestinian movements as well as elderly and sick detainees should be freed and reiterated an earlier demand for the release of women and juvenile prisoners from Israeli jails.



The statement also urged Israel to end its retaliatory military offensive in the Palestinian territories.



Egypt, which is leading mediation in the crisis, said Hamas had agreed to secure the release of the soldier but that Israel had not agreed to the unspecified conditions.



The ruling Hamas party called for an end to Israel's offensive on Friday after fighter jets blitzed Gaza, striking the interior ministry and militant targets.



Bolton, in his comments at the UN, pressed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to turn over for prosecution Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's exiled political leader, who lives in Damascus.



"In addition, we call upon Syria to stop financing the terrorists and stop cooperating with other states, such as Iran, which finance terrorists," Bolton added.



As the United Nations Security Council debated the crisis, the Palestinian movement said it was working towards freeing the soldier but that the "barbaric aggression" by Israel would not topple its administration.



"We are working to end this crisis but the aggression must stop and the siege has to be lifted," Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya said in his first public comments on the crisis.



Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships have pounded the Gaza Strip with air raids, hitting the Hamas-run interior ministry overnight Thursday as well as weapons depots and Hamas training camps, but Israel suspended plans to send ground troops into the north of the territory.



The air strikes caused the first Palestinian casualties since Israel launched a ground offensive for the missing soldier early on Wednesday, its biggest military operation since pulling out of Gaza in September 2005.



A fighter from the hardline Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement was killed in an air strike, while another militant from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, linked to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party, was shot dead in the West Bank.



Meanwhile the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades declared overnight Friday that a second Israeli soldier had been kidnapped and would be killed unless Israel ends its military offensive in the Palestinian territories,



The armed group, loosely affiliated to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party, called for "the end of the Israeli offensive," "the lifting of the blockade" in the territories, and the "withdrawal (of Israeli troops) from the occupied zones in the West Bank and Gaza", in a statement received by AFP in Gaza City,



"If our demands are not met, the Al-Aqsa Brigades will kill the kidnapped soldier," the statement said, without giving any details of the kidnapping.



The soldier was seized in the West Bank, the group said. They named him as Hoffmann Kfeir Samuel, aged 24, a resident of Holon, south of Tel Aviv.



An Israeli army spokesman said that there was no soldier with that name.



Israel further ratcheted up the pressure on the Palestinian leadership by revoking the Jerusalem residency rights of a Hamas minister and three members of parliament (MPs), meaning their likely expulsion from the occupied east of the Holy City.



Israeli troops rounded up scores of Hamas members in a massive West Bank sweep the day before, including eight ministers -- a third of the Palestinian cabinet -- and 24 MPs.



"If the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit does not return alive, there is no more Hamas government. Israel will erase this concept from the Middle Eastern political map," warned Israel's biggest selling daily Yediot Aharonot.



Haniya accused Israel of planning "open war" but vowed it would not topple his government, which took office in March but is boycotted politically and financially by the West.



Israel's offensive -- and a perceived lack of action by world leaders -- has drawn fierce criticism in the Arab world.



"This crazy adventure will light more than one big fire instead of containing a small issue over the abduction of the Israeli soldier," read an editorial in Egypt's state-owned Al-Ahram.



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