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Israel prepares for major offensive over kidnapped soldier

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced on Monday that he had ordered commanders to prepare for a major offensive following a deadly Palestinian militant attack and the kidnapping of a soldier.

The 20-year-old soldier, who also holds French nationality, was snatched in a raid on an army post on the Gaza Strip border at dawn on Sunday in which two other Israeli servicemen and two Palestinian fighters were killed.

Israel has been amassing troops on the border to prepare for any retaliatory operations after Sunday’s assault by gunmen who tunnelled their way under the border and attacked the post with rockets and bombs. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has condemned the attack while the Hamas-led Palestinian government, boycotted by both Israel and the West as a terrorist organisation, has demanded the immediate release of the soldier.

However, a representative of the Popular Resistance Committees, the armed wing of Hamas, said in a telephone call that it was holding the soldier. “He is alive and in good health,” the representative of the group said. “He is not seriously injured.”

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Olmert’s official number two, said it was Israel’s “natural and legitimate right” to use military force in an effort to retrieve the missing soldier.

A high-ranking security official also said that Israel would work to topple the Hamas-led government – boycotted financially and politically by the West since taking office in March – unless the soldier is released alive. “We will make sure that the Hamas government ceases to operate if the kidnapped soldier is not returned to us alive,” the source said. Agencies

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