Workers stage strike in Lebanon to protest mounting gasoline prices
A general strike was observed across Lebanon on Thursday but private schools did not take part in the protest action called by the umbrella trade union, the General Labor Confederation, to voice opposition over government plans to set a 25,000 Lebanese Lira ceiling on the price of 20 liters of gasoline. Energy Minister Ayoub Hmayed proposed the price following a surge in worldwide oil prices. The price of a barrel of crude oil for June delivery rose 15 cents to 41.65 dollars. Oil hit 41.85 dollars on Monday, its highest since U.S. crude futures were launched in 1983. Workers and activists staged a rally outside Cabinet headquarters as President Emile Lahoud chaired a meeting of the council that was attended by Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and government ministers. Demonstrators demanded fixing 20 liters of gasoline at ten dollars, instead of the seventeen dollars proposed by the government. They want the government to slash gasoline taxes and fees.

Israel steps up attacks in Gaza despite international fury at killing of dozens in Rafah
Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in the flashpoint town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip overnight and Friday, hours after Israel defied international fury at the killing of nearly 40 Palestinians in the Rafah camp to expand its bloodiest Gaza Strip raid in years. On Friday, Israel said an army officer was seriously wounded when another soldier mistakenly opened fire on him during an incursion into the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.
Report: A Palestinian killed in Rafah and was found dead during an incursion by dozens of Israeli tanks and armoured cars, following an Israeli rocket strike that that killed three others, bringing to 19 the number of Palestinian killed in Rafah since Wednesday, including 10 who died when the Israeli army opened fire on some 500 protesters, many of them women, children and elderly, marching in the Tal Al-Sultan area. Israeli officials, including Defence Minister Shaoul Mofaz, said that the military operation in Rafah would continue despite the fatalities and growing international criticism. Troops raided the Rafah districts of Brazil and As-Salam, along the border with Egypt, where the army claimed it is hunting tunnels used by smugglers. An overnight helicopter strike near an olive grove killed at least three Palestinian armed men and wounded two others. Medics said the remains of two other men were found, completely torn apart in what looked like another missile attack. The total death toll in the Israeli offensive is now at least 39. International outrage rose to a crescendo when Israeli tanks and helicopters fired toward protesters demanding aid. Violence has spiked since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed evacuating troops and Jewish settlers from Gaza in a plan backed by most Israelis and the United States, but rejected by his right-wing Likud party in a referendum this month. President Yasser Arafat called the strike a "war crime" against peaceful demonstrators, and appealed for international intervention. Israel provoked an uproar abroad with threats to flatten hundreds of Rafah homes to widen an army-controlled corridor along the border with Egypt.

Security Council rebukes Israel's Gaza offensive
The US allowed adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution rebuking Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes by abstaining rather than using its veto power to kill the measure. The abstention by the Bush administration reflected its dissatisfaction with Israel's largest incursion into Gaza in years. Israel said it was "disappointed" by Washington's refusal to veto the resolution. The other 14 Security Council members voted in favor after negotiations resulted in a watered-down text to prevent a U.S. veto. The final version no longer "demanded" Israel stop the bulldozing of Palestinian houses, which the UN said made 1,600 people homeless this month. The resolution calls on Israel to respect its obligations under international law. It expresses "grave concern" about the humanitarian situation of Palestinians and condemned "all acts of violence, terror and destruction. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who condemned the killing of peaceful demonstrators as well as the demolitions, said he spoke to both U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice on ways to stop the violence. He said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had telephoned him "pleading with the UN and the international community to do something." President George W. Bush called for "restraint" from Israel and the Palestinians, and said he expected "clarifications" from the Israeli government about the raid. The European Union condemned Israel's quote "reckless disregard for human life". British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the operation "unacceptable and wrong." Arabs condemned the attacks and demanded intervention. And a U.N. human rights envoy accused Israel of war crimes. The US, Palestinian and Israeli envoys to the UN had addressed the Security Council.
(US AMBASSADOR JAMES CUNNINGHAM, SAYING: "We deeply regret the loss of life of innocent Palestinians today in Gaza. While we believe that Israel
has the right to act to defend itself and its citizens we do not see that its operations in Gaza in the last few days serve the purposes of peace and security. They have worsened the humanitarian situation and resulted in confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians and have not we believe enhanced Israel's security... It is clear that Palestinian terrorists have been smuggling weapons into Gaza through tunnels in Rafah. It is clear that the Palestinian Authority has not taken serious action to address this threat or to put an end to terrorist threats as it is obligated to do under the road map, because these issues are not addressed in the resolution the United States abstained.")
(PALESTINIAN OBSERVER NASSER AL-KIDWA SAYING: "I believe it is necessary to record before this council that willful killings willfully using great suffering or serious injury to body or health and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and want only are among those acts considered to constitute grave breaches of the four Geneva Convention."
(ISRAELI AMBASSADOR DAN GILLERMAN SAYING: "The Palestinian observer has described a litany of Palestinian suffering without pointing the finger at those responsible for this suffering - his own corrupt and evil leadership, who while rejecting offers of peace by Israel and the international community have resorted to terror and violence, dragging Israel, the whole region and the Palestinian people onto a road of horror, bloodshed and destruction").

Ron Arad dead, Hizbollah has body: Reuters
Beirut-based sources close to prisoner exchange talks between Hizbollah and Israel said Israeli airman Ron Arad, missing for 17 years, is dead and the Lebanese group has his remains. An Arab source told Reuters Hizbollah also had the remains of three Israeli soldiers who went missing but were presumed killed in a battle in east Lebanon in 1982. A diplomatic source and a Lebanese political source familiar with the case confirmed the report. Hizbollah refused to comment. The fate of Arad, an air force navigator who disappeared after his plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986, has been a mystery. Sources said the information on Arad had been relayed to Prime Minister Sharon by German mediators but no deal to exchange the remains with Arab detainees is imminent. Sharon had said he was personally handling efforts to resolve the case of Arad, who Israel claimed in the past it believed was being held by Iran. Tehran has denied knowledge of his whereabouts. The Israeli Defence Ministry said it was "unaware of any developments in the Ron Arad case" but an Israeli security source said the Jewish state was taking the report seriously. The Beirut-based sources said Hizbollah is seeking a heavy price from Israel -- the release of senior Palestinian political prisoners and the last Lebanese still held in Israel -- in return for the remains. Resolving the case of Arad is key to a second phase of prisoner exchanges following a German-mediated one in January. In that exchange, Israel freed hundreds of Arab detainees while Hizbollah handed over a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of three dead soldiers. Hizbollah also want information about the fate of four Iranian diplomats who were kidnapped by Israeli-backed militiamen in 1982.

US troops face criticism for attack on wedding, dozens of Iraqis killed
US troops are facing more embarrassment amid claims they killed dozens of people at a wedding celebration in a remote western Iraqi town, at a time when the occupation forces are already reeling from a prison abuse scandal. The International Committee of the Red Cross condemned what it described as the "excessive" use of force by the US military. Meanwhile, violence continued in central Iraq, with nine civilians reported killed in what a caretaker at the Imam Hussein shrine said was a US air strike over the Shiite holy city of Karbala. In Baghdad, a US soldier was killed and three others wounded in a grenade attack.
Report: U.S. forces killed dozens in an attack in Iraq's western desert, but reports that the victims were civilians at a wedding sparked outrage. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, told Reuters the attack early on Wednesday targeted "a suspected foreign fighter safe house", east of the Syrian border. But Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, quoting eyewitnesses, said the US raid on the village of Makr al-Deeb had targeted people celebrating a wedding and had killed at least 41 civilians. Washington says the daily dose of death and destruction in Iraq will not delay its handing sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30th. U.S. General John Abizaid, who oversees military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, predicted a surge in violence leading up to Iraqi polls at the end of the year. Guests and relatives at Iraqi weddings often fire guns in the air in jubilation. A report released by the U.S. Central Command said the strike was justified because American planes had come under fire. U.S.-led forces have also been struggling against Iraqi fighters, notably militiamen backing Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Iraq's top Shi'ite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who rarely makes public statements, called on US forces and Sadr fighters this week to pull out of the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. But Sadr appeared to be ignoring the call. Hospital sources said at least eight Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in renewed fighting in Kerbala on Wednesday near one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites. The clashes erupted as U.S. tanks advanced near the shrine of Imam Hussein in Kerbala, one of several southern cities where Sadr's Mehdi Army militia rose up in a rebellion U.S. forces have spent weeks trying to crush. In Washington, President George W. Bush ramped up efforts to fill in the blanks of the US plan to transfer power in Iraq, saying top members of an interim government will be named soon. Later, after Oval Office talks with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Bush promised "a full transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government" coupled with efforts to give that entity international recognition.