Carter visits Hamas-run Gaza Strip

PALESTINE: Former US President Jimmy Carter was visiting the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Tuesday, after urging Israel to lift a blockade on the Palestinian enclave and stop treating its residents like "savages."

Carter was due to meet officials from the Islamist Hamas movement that runs the territory and which is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel and the West.

He is expected to pass on a letter from the parents of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier that Gaza militants, including Hamas, seized in a cross-border raid almost three years ago, and who remains in captivity.

Shortly after entering Gaza, Carter's convoy of white UN 4x4 vehicles sped through the streets, stopping briefly in the area of Ezbet Abed Rabbo, one of the most ravaged during Israel's war in the territory in December-January.

As Carter briefly got out of his vehicle to take a look at the damage, one of the residents who lined the streets ran up, yelling he wanted to talk to the former US leader, and getting into a brief shoving match with bodyguards.

"They all come here and look at us like we're animals and then they go home," said Majid Athamna. "We're not animals, we're human beings."

Gaza City, Tuesday, AFP