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Israel closes highway, Rafah crossing

UN intervention sought to prevent 'disaster'

AFP, Jerusalem
Israel yesterday closed down the checkpoints along the trans-Gaza highway and the Rafah border crossing with Egypt after specific warnings about militant attacks, an army spokesman said.
"The Tancher road was closed because of the Qassam rockets which were fired last night and this morning and due to specific attack warnings," he said, using the army's name for the trans-Gaza highway, which is known by the Palestinians as Salah al-Din Street.
There are two main checkpoints along the highway -- the first just south of Gaza City, and the second, just outside the southern town of Khan Yunis, which is known as the Abu Gholi checkpoint.
The Rafah border crossing was also closed earlier on Thursday due to "a specific alert about a suicide bombing", he added.
Palestinian security sources confirmed the information, saying no traffic was able to move along the road.
They also said the army closed the northern Erez crossing into Israel and the Karni industrial crossing, but the
army said neither crossing point had been affected by the closure.
Earlier on Thursday, two makeshift Qassam rockets fired by Palestinian militants in the northern Gaza Strip landed on the southern Israeli town of Sderot but caused no injuries, police sources said.
Israeli military sources also said Palestinian mortar bombs had landed near the Jewish settlement of Morag in southern Gaza, without causing any injuries.
Meanwhile, Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons appealed Thursday for intervention from human rights organisations and the United Nations to prevent their hunger strike developing into a "humanitaran disaster."
"We ask human rights organisations all around the world, and especially the UN, represented by its Secretary General Kofi Annan, to take a stand an help us end the miserable circumstances we are living," a spokesman for prisoners at a military-run detention center in the southern Negev desert told AFP by telephone.
"We ask you to assume the legal and ethical responsability by taking a quick and effective action to prevent a
humanitarian disaster," added the prisoner, who would only give his name as Rami, reading from a statement in English.
Around half of the 8,000 Palestinians currently being held in Israeli prisons are observing an open-ended hunger strike which is now in its 12th day.
The prisoners are hoping that their protest will lead to an across-the-board improvement in their conditions, including statutory visiting rights and an end to what they see as "humiliating" body and cell searches.
"The unbearable treatment had pushed us to go on this hunger strike after all our tries to obtain a change had failed and the prisons' administartion had refused to respond to our simple needs as human beings," Rami said.
"We ask the Israelis to respect our dignity, improve our conditions and allow family visits, stop the naked searching policy, the solitary confinement policy for a huge number of prisoners, improve the food quality and quantity and improve health care".