Middle East News - Gaza City - Israel sent ground troops into southern and northern Gaza Wednesday, sparking the heaviest fighting since Hamas seized full control of the Strip two weeks ago, in which Palestinian medical officials said at least 11 militants and a 12-year-old boy were killed.
A 13th Palestinian - a member of Hamas' Executive Force - died Wednesday as he was dismantling a bomb found at a security compound in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
The fighting came as the forum of Middle East peace sponsors known as the 'Quartet' was tipped to appoint Tony Blair as its special envoy after he leaves office.
'A decision is about to be announced,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Ramallah, with a formal announcement expected to come simultaneously from Washington, Brussels, Moscow and the United Nations headquarters in New York later in the day.
Russia and some fellow-members of the European Union (EU) were initially said to have expressed reservations at the appointment.
Critics at home too have expressed doubt over Blair's suitability, given the UK's role as America's ally in Iraq and the distrust in Blair in the Arab world.
But the expected appointment of a personality of his calibre nevertheless raised hopes for progress in the long-stalled Israeli- Palestinian peace process.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert telephoned the British leader of 10 years Tuesday evening, calling him a 'true friend of Israel' and saying Israel would 'cooperate with him to the fullest' as Quartet envoy.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who heads the almost two- week-old emergency government set up by Abbas in the West Bank, said Blair would be 'an important addition to the framework of international dealings with the Palestinians through the Quartet.'
Hospital officials said at least 40 other people were injured in the Gaza fighting, which erupted as Israeli ground troops crossed up to two kilometres into southern and northern Gaza early Wednesday, reaching the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis and Gaza City.
The heaviest clashes were ongoing in eastern Gaza City's Sheja'eya neighbourhood near the Karni border crossing with Israel, where at least 10 people were killed, including at least nine Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, some of them in tank shelling. But two militants were also killed in gunbattles in Khan Younis.
An Israeli army spokeswoman would only say the troops were operating against 'terrorist threats from the region.' She gave no details, but was referring to attempted attacks on Israeli border crossings and ongoing rocket-fire from the Strip at southern Israel.
Palestinian witnesses said two of the dead were a senior Islamic Jihad commander, Radi Fanouna, and a 12-year-old civilian bystander killed when a helicopter gunship backing the ground troops in eastern Gaza City fired a missile at his car, witnesses said.
Israel however vehemently denied involvement, with a spokesman saying the army was '100 per cent sure' that it did not hit the car.
The Gaza fighting came two days after Olmert placed his support behind Abbas of Fatah at a four-way summit in Egypt that excluded the radical Islamic Hamas movement.
But an Israeli military spokesman said the escalation was the result of a more intense response by local militants to what he said was a routine operation.
'There is a situation where many more armed men are confronting the force. Why we have no idea, but our activity is very similar to that of the past weeks and nothing unusual,' he told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.
Abbas, in the joint news conference with Lavrov, strongly condemned 'all these criminal acts against our people.'
But he also criticized the ongoing rocket-fire from Gaza which has spurred the recent Israeli military operations.
'I wish to stress that we are against all those useless missiles coming from here and there,' he said, shortly after the Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for firing two Gaza-made al-Quds rockets at southern Israel.
In line with the other members of the Quartet - the US, EU and UN - Lavrov too expressed his support for Abbas, saying 'we back the acts of President Abbas to restore security and order according to the Palestinian constitution.'
During the 15-month international boycott of the previous Hamas- led government, Russia had been the only Quartet to hold contacts with the radical Islamic movement.
'Russia, as a member of the Quartet, is doing all it can to help the Palestinians regain unity,' he said, adding Russia would participate in humanitarian aid to the isolated Gaza Strip and calling on Israel to take 'additional steps and create an atmosphere to help the peace process.'
Lavrov earlier met Olmert in Jerusalem and his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv, where he warned that 'a divided Palestine is a problem for Israel and the whole world.'