The Queenstown police are calling it their first Facebook arrest. The police department created its online presence on the site just two months ago, said Constable Sean Drader.

“It’s pretty popular, isn’t it, this site?” Drader told CNN Wednesday, surprised at the quick success.

The 21-year-old masked man allegedly broke into a local pub through a roof early Monday morning and spent considerable time trying to crack open a safe using an angle grinder.

“It’s a very small room that he broke into, and it was hot weather. It’s summer here,” Drader said. “There are sparks flying all about him. And after about an hour, he gets too hot and takes his gloves and balaclava off.”

Unable to break open the safe, the man gave up and got ready to leave, Drader said.

“He looks around to see if he’s forgotten anything, and he looks up right at the camera. It was rather silly. We got a good look,” he said.

The police department posted the surveillance camera photos on its Facebook page. By the next day, the man was in custody, fingered by viewers who recognized him from the images on the site, and from TV segments on the Facebook posting.

Police did not release the suspect’s name, but said the Queenstown native is charged with two counts of burglary.

Facebook, the Web’s most popular social networking site, allows users to create personal profiles. They can then connect with one another, upload photos and share links. The site boasts more than 90 million active users.

In November, Facebook helped a seafood restaurant owner in Melbourne identify five customers who dined on oysters, trout and expensive wine and then bolted without paying the US $323 bill.

According to media reports, the owner remembered one of the diners asking about a former waitress.

The waitress suggested the restaurateur look through her friend’s list on Facebook. A quick scroll later, the owner spotted one of the bill dodgers.

The message is “an invitation” from bin Laden to take part in “jihad to stop the aggression against Gaza.”

The audio message was posted on a radical Islamist Web site known for posting statements from bin Laden.

CNN could not independently confirm the authenticity of the message, but the speaker’s voice was similar to recordings that bin Laden has made in the past.

The last time bin Laden released an audio message was in mid-May, timed to coincide with Israel’s 60th anniversary. That message urged his followers to liberate Palestine.

Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza on December 27 to stop rocket strikes on southern Israel. The death toll in Gaza was nearing 1,000, including more than 300 children, according to Palestinian medical sources.

The Israeli toll stood at 13, including three civilians.

Bin Laden, whose approximate age is 51, is the head of al Qaeda terrorist network which was responsible for the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States that killed 2,751 people.

Bin Laden has been in hiding since the U.S. assault on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. government is offering a $25 million reward for information leading to bin Laden’s capture.

President Bush, whose term ends next week, told CNN’s Larry King on Tuesday that he remains optimistic that bin Laden would be found.

King asked Bush, “Are we ever going to find bin Laden?”

“Yes, of course, absolutely,” Bush replied. “We’ve got a lot of people out there looking for him, a lot of assets. You can’t run forever.”

The message is important to the incoming U.S. president because it signifies that bin Laden is still “out there,” said Tim Roemer, the former Democratic congressman from Indiana who served on both the congressional and the presidential September 11 commissions.

“It’s a reminder of President-elect (Barack) Obama’s inheritance of some of the difficult problems out there that he has to confront,” said Roemer, who is president of the Center for National Policy.

“Al Qaeda is trying to be relevant with this tape,” Roemer said. “They seek competition with Hamas, Hezbollah, the ongoing battle between Israel and the Palestinians …

“This reminds us of what bin Laden said right after 9/11. He said it wasn’t 19 Arab armies or 19 Arab states that attacked the United States. It was 19 post-graduate students. It reminds us how much the world has changed, and how many different threats are out there today.”

Smoke fills the sky during clashes between Israeli and Palestinian forces at the border of Gaza City on Sunday.

The IDF also said soldiers engaged Hamas fighters in several firefights during the first hours of the ground incursion into Gaza.

According to the Israeli military, 30 soldiers have been wounded during the Jewish state’s incursion into Gaza. Two of the soldiers reportedly have serious injuries.

A number of Hamas fighters were wounded, the IDF said, but he did not specify how many.

At least four Palestinians have been killed as a direct result of the ground assault, Palestinian medical sources said, bringing the death toll in Gaza to 460 since the conflict erupted December 27.

At least 10 rockets were launched from Gaza into southern Israel Sunday morning, although no injuries have been reported, the IDF said.

Blasts of heavy machine-gun fire and explosions from airstrikes filled the air in Gaza early Sunday morning, hours after Israel rolled thousands of troops into the Palestinian territory.

Israel’s ground assault followed a weeklong flurry of airstrikes. Israel has said the attacks are in response to recent rocket attacks from Hamas militants in Gaza.

“We haven’t articulated regime change as the goal of this operation. Our goal is to protect our people,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

Regev said Gaza’s civilian population was not Israel’s enemy.

“In many ways, they are victims like us. Both the civilian population of southern Israel and the civilian population of the Gaza Strip have been victims of this terrible, extremist Hamas regime,” Regev said.

Not long after Israel’s ground incursion began, Hamas vowed to “fight until the last breath” and warned Israel that “Gaza will be your cemetery.”
“We will not abandon the battlefield, and we will stay on the thorny course, and we will fight until the last breath,” Hamas chief spokesman Ismail Radwan said in a statement on Palestinian network Al-Aqsa.

The incursion began just hours after the European Union announced that a delegation is heading to the Middle East to meet with regional leaders and broker a cease-fire.

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike on Gaza Friday morning.

An airstrike Friday hit the central Gaza home of a senior Hamas military leader who Israel said was a leading figure in developing rockets used to attack southern Israel.
Hamas security sources confirmed that the Nusseirat home of Imad Akel, where Israelis said weapons were stored, was bombed.

The Israeli air force also struck the home of a Hamas militant in Jabalya, in northern Gaza, where stockpiles of munitions were housed, the Israel Defense Forces said.

On Thursday, the homes of two top members of Hamas’ military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, were struck. One of the men, Nizar Rayan, was killed.
Thousands of Palestinians crowded outside a mosque in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp Friday for Rayan’s funeral procession. The same mosque was hit by Israeli missiles overnight because, Israel said, it was used by Hamas as a terror hub and to store munitions.

The IDF said militants had fired 20 rockets from Gaza into southern Israel by Friday evening, and Israeli planes bombarded tunnels in Rafah near Gaza’s border with Egypt.

An IDF spokesman said Israeli jets attacked the launchers that fired rockets toward Ashkelon Friday morning. Plumes of black smoke could be seen as Israeli missiles continued to hit targets in Gaza as the sun went down.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday a “durable and sustainable” cease-fire was needed to end the violence.

“We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo,” she said after meeting with President Bush at the White House.

She blamed Hamas for the misery of Palestinians.

“Hamas has made it very difficult for the people of Gaza to have a reasonable life,” she said.

Israel took steps before Friday prayers to head off any possible violence in Jerusalem and other Israeli cities. West Bank entries into Israel were halted and men under 50 were banned from entering Jerusalem mosques.

Despite a call by Hamas leaders for “a day of rage” against Israel, only a few demonstrators threw rocks at police or staged protests after prayers ended at the al Aqsa mosque in the old city of Jerusalem. There were only scattered protests late Friday afternoon in the West Bank.

Palestinian medical sources said at least 421 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli raids began Saturday, and 2,220 people have been wounded.

Israeli officials said four Israelis — three of them civilians — have died in the past week from Palestinian rocket fire, and 57 have been wounded.

Several hundred foreigners trapped inside Gaza when border crossings were closed last week lined up to exit into Israel on Friday, while more trucks filled with humanitarian aid were allowed to enter Gaza.

If a muslim country attacks other country then this a terrorist attack. But if ISRAEL, the terrorist country of the world, attacks GAZA then it is self defense what an bullshit the UN is doing.

Palestinian firefighters pour water Thursday on the rubble of the home of Hamas commander Nizar Rayan.

The Israeli air force bombed the homes Thursday of two top Hamas military figures, killing at least one of them.
The Hamas television station Al-Aqsa showed the body of Nizar Rayan, a commander in northern Gaza, being pulled from the rubble of his house in Jabalya, north of Gaza City.

Rayan, one of the main founders of Hamas, is the senior-most Hamas leader to be killed in Israel’s six-day air offensive on Gaza, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

The Islamist University lecturer “ranked among Hamas’ top five decision-makers as the liaison between the group’s military and political wing,” the paper said.

The newspaper also described him as an “outspoken advocate of renewing suicide bombings against Israel.”

The Israeli Defense Forces said Rayan was behind a 2004 suicide bombing in Ashdod, in which 10 Israelis were killed, and an October 2001 suicide mission in a Jewish settlement in Gaza that his son carried out. Two Israelis were killed in that mission, the military said.

The Israelis would not say whether they were specifically targeting Rayan in the assault. The bombing touched off secondary explosions from munitions and weapons stored in the home, Haaretz reported.

Nine other people also died in the attack, Hamas and Palestinian medical sources said, some of whom were believed to be members of Rayan’s family.

Rayan had urged Gazans not to abandon their homes during the Israeli air attacks, even if they received threats to evacuate, Arab media reported.

Video showed crowds of men outside the remains of Rayan’s house, shouting as they climbed mounds of debris, pulling bodies from the rubble and searching for other victims. Nearby buildings were heavily damaged, and rubble — some streaked with blood — clogged the streets.

An airstrike also hit the Gaza City home of senior Hamas military operative Nabil Amrin, causing weaponry stored inside to explode, the IDF said.

There was no word on possible casualties, and the IDF said they didn’t know whether Amrin was home at the time.

The attacks were among dozens Thursday in northern Gaza in what Israel says is a response to ongoing Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel. The IDF said in a statement that more than 40 rockets fell in Israel, and it carried out over 50 airstrikes on Gaza.

The military has said it is targeting only Hamas militants, and Hamas has vowed to defend Gaza in the face of what it calls continued Israeli aggression.

In Paris, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose truce proposal was turned down Wednesday by Israel. It would have stopped the fighting temporarily so more humanitarian aid could reach Gaza.

The six days of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have “achieved changes,” Livni said.

“What we are doing now is changing the equation, making it a better reality to our citizens, stopping the rockets on Israel,” Livni said after meeting with Sarkozy.

“We want to weaken Gaza,” Livni said. “At the end of the day, Hamas is a problem, not only to Israel but to the entire Palestinian people,” Livni said.

Since Israel launched the bombing campaign Saturday, Palestinian medical sources say at least 400 people, including 42 children, have been killed

Four Israelis, three of them civilians, have been killed and 56 wounded by Palestinian rocket fire, police, military and medical officials have said.

Palestinian militants continued to fire rockets into southern Israel. The Israeli military said four struck Beer Sheva on Wednesday, and at least two medium-range rockets struck the community Thursday. Beer Sheva is about 19 miles outside Gaza

Israel targeted the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City overnight, gutting the structure. The ministries of justice and education and civil defense headquarters, to the city’s west, also were bombed.

Meanwhile, in Rome, Italy, on Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI prayed for peace in Gaza.

“To Mary we entrust our profound desire to live in peace that rises from the heart of the great majority of the Israeli and Palestinian population, once again jeopardized by the massive outbreak of violence in the Gaza Strip in response to other violence,” he said at a morning Mass.

A Gaza-based journalist, whose name was withheld for security reasons, told CNN he heard 18 blasts in the area and that two fires were burning at the compound early Tuesday. More bombs continued to drop over Gaza through the morning.

With Tuesday’s bombs, Israel appeared to extend its airstrike campaign in Gaza to a fourth day. The strikes — which Israel says are aimed at stopping the firing of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel — have killed more than 375 Palestinians, most of them Hamas militants, Palestinian medical sources said Tuesday.

At least 60 civilians have been killed in Gaza, U.N. officials said. About 650 people have been wounded there, according to the Palestinian medical sources.

Monday, Israel’s defense minister said the nation was in an “all-out war” with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules Gaza.

“We have stretched our hand in peace many times to the Palestinian people. We have nothing against the people of Gaza,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel’s parliament. “But this is an all-out war against Hamas and its branches.”

Israel continues to strike Hamas targets in Gaza, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman told CNN.

Mortar fire along the Gaza border late Monday killed one Israeli soldier and wounded four others, he said.

Earlier Monday, columns of smoke rose over Gaza City as warplanes carried out strikes. Though there was no indication of an Israeli military ground operation in Gaza, Israeli tanks cruised along the territory’s edges.

yad Nasr, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the streets of Gaza were largely empty during airstrikes Monday morning.

Despite the airstrikes, militants fired more than 40 rockets and mortar shells into Israel on Monday, according to Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld. More than 150 rockets have been launched into Israeli territory since the campaign began, Israel Defense Forces said.

Six Israelis have died over the past three days, five of them civilians.

One of the rocket strikes killed an Israeli at a construction site in Ashkelon, 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of Gaza, and wounded eight others, a hospital spokeswoman said. Rocket strikes killed an Israeli and wounded two others at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, according to Israeli police and hospital spokespersons.

Rocket attacks also wounded two people, one seriously, in Ashdod. One woman who was critically injured during the attack died later during an operation, according to Israeli medical sources.

The White House on Monday called on Hamas to halt rocket fire against Israel, so calm can be restored in Gaza.

Israel has struck more than 300 Hamas targets since Saturday, its military said. The Israeli air force carried out at least 20 airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, Israeli military sources said.

Hamas security sources said the targets included the homes of two commanders of Hamas’ military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in the Jabalya refugee camp just north of Gaza City. Neither commander was among the seven people killed in those strikes, the sources said.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on a report by Dr. Mu’awiya Hassanein that a strike near a mosque in Jabalya killed five children in a nearby home.

The situation triggered protests in Iran, Greece, Britain and Lebanon, and the Iranian government declared a day of mourning for Palestinians in Gaza.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei urged the world’s Muslim populations to unite against Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza.

“All true believers in the world of Islam and Palestinian fighters are duty-bound to defend the defenseless women and children in Gaza Strip and those giving their lives in carrying out such a divine duty are ‘martyrs,’ ” Khamenei said through Iran’s official news agency IRNA.

U.S. and Israeli officials told CNN that Hamas militants in Gaza have received support from Iran in the past in the form of weapons, training and cash.

“We know of Hamas operatives, commandos and soldiers who were trained in Iran itself. We know that. So there is a close cooperation and exchange of know-how and activities,” said Isaac Herzog, a member of the Israeli Security Cabinet.

Iran denies any involvement with Hamas. But an Iranian official told CNN Iran has ties to Shiite groups such as Hezbollah, a political party in Lebanon with alleged terrorist roots.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Hamas for the rocket attacks, but also had strong words for Israel.

“While recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself, I have also condemned the excessive use of force by Israel in Gaza. The suffering caused to civilian populations as a result of the large-scale violence and destruction that have taken place over the past few days has saddened me profoundly,” he said in a prepared statement.

The U.N. Security Council called for both sides to immediately end the violence, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that the campaign could last “for some time,” and his Cabinet voted to call up 7,000 reservists.

So far, about 2,000 reservists have been activated, according to the government. Read analysis of what may happen next

Hamas pledges it will defend its land and people from what it calls continued Israeli aggression. Each side blames the other for violating an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. The truce formally expired December 19, but it had been weakening for months.

Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian parliament member, flatly blamed the violence on the Israeli “occupation” of the Palestinian territories and dismissed Israeli claims that it is targeting only Hamas.

“This is not a war on Hamas; it is a war on the Palestinian people,” he said. “The Israeli politicians are using this bloodbath, which is the worst since 1967, for their election campaigns. This is insane.”

Both Barak and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will be vying in February for the prime minister’s post against Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Barak and Netanyahu have previously held the post.

The ongoing assault and threat of Israeli military ground incursion caused panic in Gaza City, the territory’s densely populated capital, a U.N. humanitarian official told CNN on Monday.

“It’s very bad, people are running in all directions because of the bombings that are happening everywhere,” Karen AbuZayd said from Gaza City.

AbuZayd is the commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which provides assistance to about 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.

Israel allowed more than 50 trucks carrying relief aid into Gaza on Monday — in addition to 40 on Sunday — Israeli military sources said. The U.N. is expecting 100 trucks Monday, but a U.N. official said it will not be enough to alleviate the worsening humanitarian situation.

In the West Bank, Saeb Erakat, adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, urged Israeli and Hamas leaders to put another cease-fire in place.

The power base of Abbas’ Fatah party is in the West Bank. The party is locked in a power struggle with Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and wrested Gaza from Fatah in violent clashes last year. Abbas, a U.S. ally, wields little influence in Gaza.

A girl in Caracas, Venezuela, holds a sign reading, "No more massacre in Gaza" at Israel's embassy Monday.

The attacks entered their third day Monday, with more than 300 people in Gaza reported killed and hundreds more wounded. Israel says the military assault is in response to ongoing rocket strikes on Israel, which have killed two Israelis.

In London, England, dozens of protesters gathered outside the Israeli Embassy, waving flags and trying to push their way closer to the building, as police tried to hold them back and erect a barricade.

Police in Germany said about 2,000 protesters marched peacefully down Berlin’s Kurfuerstendamm Boulevard and dispersed after about three hours.

Protesters also have taken to the streets in Denmark, France, Italy and Spain, according to news reports. There also were reports of demonstrations in Caracas, Venezuela.

Iranian media reported that thousands took part in anti-Israel demonstrations in Tehran on Monday, which the government declared a day of mourning for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Photographs of the rallies posted by Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency showed black-shrouded women and men holding shoes in the air — widely considered an insult in the Middle East — while others held Palestinian flags and signs that said “Down with U.S.A.” in English and Farsi.

Greek riot police clashed with protesters in Athens during a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy, according to police and images broadcast on state television.

Protesters hurled stones in an attempt to break through the police cordon around the heavily secured embassy. Police responded with tear gas.

In Iraq, hundreds of supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in al-Mustansiriya Square in eastern Baghdad. The demonstrators carried Iraqi and Palestinian flags, banners and pictures of al-Sadr and his father.

The demonstrators threw an Israeli flag on the ground, put President Bush’s picture on top of it and set both on fire.

In the Muslim world, demonstrations also were held in Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Libya and Bahrain, the BBC and other news outlets reported

Also, thousands of Lebanese demonstrators packed the streets of Beirut as part of a rally called by the militant group Hezbollah. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addressed the crowd via satellite from an undisclosed location.

Protests were also held in Israel, where students at universities in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem demonstrated against the Israeli military operation, ynetnews.com reported.