Hamas kills suspected collaborators with Israel

Clinton meets Netanyahu to seek Gaza truce

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GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and pledged to work for a truce in the Gaza Strip "in the days ahead".

As the two began late-night talks in Jerusalem, Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli air strikes continued. Netanyahu said he would prefer a "long-term" diplomatic solution but repeated his readiness to step up an offensive against Gaza's rocket crews.

Clinton's outline of further days of negotiation, notably in Cairo with Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, may dampen talk of an immediate end to a week of violence that has killed over 140 people, most Palestinians but including two Israelis on Tuesday.

Officials from Egypt and from Gaza's ruling Hamas movement had talked up the chances of an end to hostilities, at least in some interim form, by the end of the day. But a Hamas leader in Cairo later told Reuters there would be no announcement before Wednesday. He blamed Israel for not responding to proposals.

Netanyahu, who faces a general election in two months and had mobilized army reserves for threatened ground invasion of the enclave, stressed his interest in a "long-term" deal to end rocket fire on Israel - a kind of deal that has eluded him and his predecessors in four years since Israel's last offensive.

Clinton, too, who broke off from an Asian tour with President Barack Obama and assured Netanyahu of "rock-solid" U.S. support for Israel's security, spoke of seeking a "durable outcome" and of the "responsibility" for contributing to peace borne by Egypt, Gaza's other neighbor, whose new leaders hail from the Muslim Brotherhood that inspired Hamas's founders.

"In the days ahead, the United States will work with our partners here in Israel and across the region toward an outcome that bolsters security for the people of Israel, improves conditions for the people of Gaza and moves toward a comprehensive peace for all people of the region," Clinton said.

"It is essential to de-escalate the situation in Gaza. The rocket attacks from terrorist organizations inside Gaza on Israeli cities and towns must end and a broader calm restored.

"The goal must be a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike."

Netanyahu, who has seemed in no immediate rush to repeat the invasion of winter 2008-09 in which over 1,400 Palestinians died, said: "If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem with diplomatic means, we prefer that.

"But if not, I'm sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever action is necessary to defend its people."

AIMS

The Jewish state launched the campaign last week with the declared aim of halting the rocketing of its towns from the Palestinian enclave, ruled by the Hamas militant group that does not recognize Israel's right to exist.

Medical officials in Gaza said 31 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday. An Israeli soldier and a civilian died when rockets exploded near the Gaza frontier, police and the army said.

Gaza medical officials say 138 people have died in Israeli strikes, mostly civilians, including 34 children. In all, five Israelis have died, including three civilians killed last week.

Khaled Meshaal, exile leader of Hamas, said on Monday that Israel must halt its military action and lift its blockade of the Palestinian coastal enclave in exchange for a truce.

Obama, whose relations with the hawkish Netanyahu have long been strained, has said he want a diplomatic solution, rather than a possible Israeli ground operation in the densely populated territory, home to 1.7 million Palestinians.

Israel's military on Tuesday targeted more than 130 sites in Gaza, including ammunition stores and the Gaza headquarters of the National Islamic Bank. Israeli police said more than 150 rockets were fired from Gaza by the evening.

"No country would tolerate rocket attacks against its cities and against its civilians. Israel cannot tolerate such attacks," Netanyahu said with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who arrived in Jerusalem from talks in Cairo, at his side.

JERUSALEM

After nightfall, Israel stepped up its Gaza bombardment. Artillery shells and missiles fired from naval gunboats slammed into the territory and air strikes came at a frequency of about one every 10 minutes.

In an attack claimed in Gaza by Hamas's armed wing, a longer-range rocket targeted Jerusalem on Tuesday for the second time since Israel launched the air offensive.

The rocket, which fell harmlessly in the occupied West Bank, triggered warning sirens in the holy city about the time Ban arrived for truce discussions. Another rocket damaged an apartment building in Rishon Lezion, near Tel Aviv.

Rockets fired at the two big cities over the past week were the first to reach them in decades, a sign of what Israel says is an increasing threat from Gaza militants.

In the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Hamas executed six alleged collaborators, whom a security source quoted by the Hamas Aqsa radio said "were caught red-handed" with "filming equipment to take footage of positions". The radio said they were shot.

Militants on a motorcycle dragged the body of one of the men through the streets.

Along Israel's sandy, fenced-off border with the Gaza Strip, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments awaiting any orders to go in. Some 45,000 reserve troops have been called up since the offensive was launched.

A delegation of nine Arab ministers, led by the Egyptian foreign minister, visited Gaza in a further signal of heightened Arab solidarity with the Palestinians.

Egypt has been a key player in efforts to end the most serious fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants since a three-week Israeli invasion of the enclave in the winter of 2008-09. Egypt has a 1979 peace treaty with Israel seen by the West as the cornerstone of Middle East peace, but that has been tested as never before by the removal of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak as president last year in the Arab Spring uprisings.

Mursi, elected Egyptian president this year, is a veteran of the Muslim Brotherhood, spiritual mentors of Hamas, but says he is committed to Egypt's treaty with Israel.

Mursi has warned Netanyahu of serious consequences from an invasion of the kind into Gaza four years ago. But he has been careful so far not to alienate Israel, or Washington, a major aid donor to Egypt.

(Additional reporting by Cairo bureau; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Alison Williams)

West concerned about fuel move at Iran nuclear power plant

VIENNA (Reuters) - Western officials voiced concern on Tuesday about what they described as an unexpected unloading of fuel at Iran's first nuclear energy plant and said Tehran, which has dismissed it as a normal step, must clarify the issue.

The U.N. nuclear agency said in a confidential report on Friday that fuel assemblies were transferred last month from the reactor core of the Russian-built Bushehr plant to a spent fuel pond, but it gave no reason for the move.

The 1,000-megawatt Bushehr plant - whose start-up has been delayed for years - is a symbol of what Iran calls its peaceful nuclear ambitions, disputed by the West, and any new hitch would probably be seen as an embarrassment both for Tehran and Moscow.

"This is not a routine matter or something that's quite ordinary," a senior Western official who declined to be identified said. "So this is of great concern. We need answers."

Another Western diplomat in Vienna, where the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based, said he did not know what had happened at Bushehr but that the fuel development raised possible safety-related questions.

"It sounds a safety bell and then it potentially sounds a safeguards bell if it is used in a weird way," the diplomat said, referring to the fact that plutonium usable for nuclear bombs could in theory be extracted from spent fuel.

The removal of the fuel came some two months after Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said the long-postponed plant on Iran's Gulf coast was operating at full capacity.

It was plugged into Iran's national grid in September 2011, a move intended to end protracted delays in its construction.

Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said the fuel transfer was part of a "normal technical procedure" linked to transferring responsibility for the plant to Iranian from Russian engineers.

Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Reza Sajjadi, said there was no reason for concern: "Before the handover of the station to Iranian specialists, the inspection work needs to be completed ... Nothing unforeseen is happening there."

But a senior diplomat familiar with Bushehr said last week about the fuel transfer: "It was certainly not foreseen, that's for sure."

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION RISK?

Iran is the only country with an operating nuclear power plant that is not part of the 75-nation Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), which was negotiated after the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

Early last year, Iran said it was having to remove fuel for tests. A source close to the matter then said it was done due to concern that metal particles from nearly 30-year-old equipment used in the reactor's construction had contaminated the fuel.

Russian builder NIAEP - part of Rosatom - was in October quoted as saying Bushehr would be formally "handed over for use" to Iran in March 2013, whereas earlier officials had said that would happen by the end of this year.

Iran, a major oil producer, says electricity generation is the main purpose of its nuclear activity but its adversaries say Tehran's underlying goal is the ability to make atom bombs.

Bushehr is not considered a major proliferation risk by Western powers, whose concern is focused on sites where Iran enriches uranium, which can have civilian and military purposes.

Its construction was started by Germany's Siemens before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah, and it was taken over by Russian engineers in the 1990s.

Nuclear expert Greg Thielmann said Bushehr did not pose an "acute" proliferation threat as Iran was required to return any spent fuel to the Russian supplier and it did not have a reprocessing plant needed to separate out the plutonium.

But spent fuel from Iranian reactors poses "a long-term proliferation concern, because they would provide material from which fissile material could be derived", said Thielmann, of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

(This story corrected paragraph 10 to say that ambassador is from Iran, not Russia)

(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Israeli airstrikes kill 3 Palestinian journalists

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed three Palestinian journalists in their cars on Tuesday, a Gaza health official and the head of the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV said. Israel acknowledged targeting the men, claiming they had ties to militants.

Later Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike hit a building that houses the office of the French news agencyAgence France Presse. An agency photojournalist who was in the office at the time said the target appeared to be two floors above him. No one was injured and the agency office was not damaged.

The strikes came on the seventh day of Israel's offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers. A number of journalists have been killed over the years while covering fighting between the Jewish state and the Palestinian militant group, but not in targeted strikes that Israel acknowledged.

Two of those killed were cameramen working for Al Aqsa TV, the centerpiece of a growing Hamas media empire, said station head Mohammed Thouraya. The two were driving in a car with press markings in Gaza City on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after wrapping up an assignment at the city's Shifa Hospital, Thouraya added.

The station said the car was hit by a missile and broadcast the aftermath, with the vehicle consumed by flames. Thouraya said the bodies of the two, Mohammed al-Koumi and Hussam Salam, were badly burned.

Later Tuesday, another Israeli missile killed an employee for Al Quds Educational Radio, a private station, said Ashraf al-Kidra, a Gaza health official. Mohammed Abu Eisha died when his car was hit in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah, al-Kidra said.

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said a preliminary investigation showed all three were Hamas operatives, but would not elaborate.

Israel has struck a wide range of Hamas-linked targets during its offensive, including rocket launching sites and the homes of suspected activists, killing more than 120 people.

Asked whether Israel had widened its range of targets to include journalists working for media run by Hamas or other militant groups, Leibovich said: "The targets are people who have relevance to terror activity."

Thouraya denied that the two employees killed Tuesday were linked to violence.

"Our crew were fighters, but they were not fighting with weapons," he said. "They were fighting with their cameras. They were on the battlefield to defend the people by filming the awful crimes (of the Israeli offensive) and broadcasting them to the world."

Mahmoud al-Hams, the AFP photographer, said the building housing the French news agency shook and he could smell fire after it was hit. He said the building, which is part of a commercial mall, has an office of a Hamas-related media outlet for women, which was hit in the strike. Families who had taken refuge in the building from airstrikes in northern Gaza fled after the attack.

Over the weekend, an Israeli missile struck an Al Aqsa office on the top floor of a Gaza City high-rise also being used by other local and foreign news outlets. A second strike hit the Lebanon-based Al Quds TV in a second media center, causing some damage. Al Quds TV is seen as sympathetic to Hamas.

Since seizing control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas has gradually built a sophisticated media operation. During the current offensive, Al Aqsa TV and Radio reporters have closely covered events, often providing the first reports of deaths and injuries that are later confirmed by hospital officials.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev alleged that both Al Aqsa and Al Quds "are integral parts of terrorist military organizations."

He said those working for the two outlets "'are not journalists by any meaning of the word."

U.S. blocks U.N. Security Council action on Israel-Gaza conflict