Egyptian foreign minister: Gaza damage is beyond what we had heard

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr said during a convoy visit to the Gaza Strip that the damage the convoy members saw resulting from the latest Israeli strikes on the territory is beyond what had previous been reported.   "Prior to our visit to Gaza we had an idea about what is happening there, but what we have seen today is far beyond what we had heard. Views of the damage and the killings are very intense," Amr was quoted as saying by Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency. "The Egyptian people continue to support the people of Gaza and all Palestinians and will never tolerate the blockade, nor the stifling of the strip," he continued. Foreign ministers from a group of Arab states, as well as Turkey, crossed into Gaza through the Rafah border on Tuesday to show their solidarity with the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave which is locked in a fresh round of hostilities with Israel. The visit was planned at an emergency Arab League meeting in Cairo last Saturday, at which Arab ministers gave their backing to Egyptian efforts to try to secure a truce between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Arab ministers have condemned the Israeli air offensive on Gaza that begun on Wednesday, in response to what Israel said was an unacceptable barrage of rockets fired by Hamas into southern Israel. Some 110 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of them civilians, including 27 children. Three Israelis were killed last week when a Gaza missile struck their house. From Ahramonline