BBC news 2009-01-19 加文本

BBC 2009-01-19

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BBC News with Ian Perdon.

The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that Israel is not interested in remaining in Gaza and wants its troops out as quickly as possible. He was speaking a day after Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza, and just hours after Hamas said its fighters and other Palestinian militant groups would also hold their fire. Adam Mynott reports from Jerusalem.

Surrounded by an array of European political leaders, some of whom were highly critical of Israel’s tactics in the conflict with Hamas, the Israeli prime minister said his country’s troops would leave Gaza as soon as possible. The European leaders have travelled to Israel to lend their support to the ceasefiresannounced by Hamas and Israel. They’ve urged Israel to open the border crossing points between Israel and the Gaza Strip. They have also stressed that it’s important to capitalize on the developments of the past 24 hours to reinvigorate the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and put in place an enduring two-state solution.

In a televised speech, the top Hamas leader in Gaza Ismail Haniya has said that the Palestinian people had won a great victory over Israel. He said Israel’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip had not cowed the Palestinians. The ceasefire in Gaza remains fragile. Palestinian militants fired about twenty rockets over the border after the Israeli ceasefire announcement, and Israel responded with an air attack. Doctors say the bodies of 95 people have been recovered from the rubble. Thousands of Palestinians who fled their homes during the Israeli offensive have been returning from shelters and trying to recover their possessions. Our correspondent Christian Fraser is in the town of Rafa.

Life has returned to Rafa today. The market was opened for the first time in three weeks, and it was busy. Few would dare to leave their houses such was the intensity of the bombardment. Old friends and relatives hugged in the street. For others, it was a time to go home. 40,000 people left their houses close to the border, and many returned today to pick through the pieces desolation amid devastation.

The United States President-elect Barack Obama has told a crowd of tens of thousands at a concert in Washington that an enormous task lies ahead for America. The concert was the beginning of three days of festivities leading up to Mr. Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday. He said that with his nation at war and the economy in crisis, there were bound to be setbacks and false starts in the coming months. But he said his greatest hope was that the people of America who want a change could bring that change about.

“There is no doubt that our road will be long, that our climb will be steep, but never forget that the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right we do when the moment is hard . I ask you to help reveal the character once more.”

World News from the BBC.

Researchers say they’ve found evidence that tens of millions of people from South Asia are almost guaranteed to suffer heart disease because of a single gene mutation that affects 4% of the region’s people. The researchers say this mutated gene has been found at roughly similar frequencies in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Once people who have the mutation reach late middle age, their chance of developing heart disease rises dramatically, reaching up to 90%.

A senior Sunni politician has been killed in a suicide bombing in northern Iraq. Hassan Zaidan al-Luhaibi, the vice president of the Sunni National Dialogue bloc, was killed at a campaign meeting south of the city of Mosul. From Baghdad, Jonny Dymond reports.

Accounts of how Hassan Zaidan al-Luhaibi’s killer got into the campaign meeting differ, but his death has been confirmed by the police and the leader of his political party. As well as being a member of the national parliament and the deputy leader of the National Dialogue bloc, Mr. al-Luhaibi was a candidate in the forthcoming provincial elections. The National Dialogue bloc is one of the largest groups in the Iraqi Parliament Sunni Muslim Accordance Front . An eyewitness has also told the BBC that four local leaders were killed in the attack, but that’s not been confirmed by the police.(www.hXen.com)

First indications from the local elections in the German state of Hesse suggest that the opposition Social Democrats have suffered a big setback. Exit Polls indicate the governing Christian Democrats look set to retain control of the state assembly in a coalition with the Free Democrats.

Voting is underway in El Salvador in local and parliamentary elections. Opinion Polls indicate that the party of the former left-wing guerillas could be poised to win its biggest electoral successes since the end of El Salvador’s bloody civil war 17 years ago. The former guerrilla's party, the FMLN, is ahead of the president’s right-wing Arena party in the polls.

BBC News.