REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, NEW YORK -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon on Tuesday voiced his concerns over "escalating violence" in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, which left an Israeli civilian killed in a cross border fire in Gaza and a young Palestinian child dead in Gaza following Israeli retaliatory raids.
Secretary-General Ban "condemns the killing of an Israeli civilian today as a result of cross border fire from Gaza, and the bus bombing near Tel Aviv on Sunday," said a statement issued here by Ban's spokesman.
"He also deplores the death of a young child in Gaza from Israeli retaliatory raids today as well as a number of Palestinian civilian casualties since Friday. He extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims," said the statement.
A three-year-old Palestinian girl has been killed in a series of retaliatory Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, media reports said, adding that the attacks came hours after an Israeli civilian was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper while repairing the border security fence.
According to reports, the girl died when Israeli shells hit the east of Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
"The secretary-general rejects all actions targeting civilians and calls on all concerned to exert maximum restraint to prevent another cycle of bloodshed," the statement said."It is also essential to preserve the ceasefire understanding of November 2012 and restore calm."
Ban also emphasized the need for the Israeli and Palestinian sides to remain steadfast in their commitment to achieving the two- state solution in order to end the violence permanently.
Israel considers Gaza a "hostile territory" after it was taken over by the anti-Israel Islamist Hamas movement in 2007. There has been intermittent violence along the border since a ceasefire ended an eight-day conflict between Israel and the militants in Gaza in November 2012.
There was an escalation in incidents across the Gaza border in the past week. On Friday, Palestinians who approached the fence were shot at by Israeli soldiers, and one of them was dead later.
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