The civilian death toll in Gaza increased dramatically today, with at least 12 members of an extended family, including seven young children, killed in an air strike on their house in Gaza City while the bombing of two United Nations schools being used as shelters took 13 lives.

The bodies of the Daya family were pulled from the rubble of a house in Gaza City's Zeitoun area after it was hit by two Israeli missiles. The dead included seven children aged from one to 12 years, three women and two men. Nine other people were believed to be trapped in the rubble.

Israeli missiles also struck a UN school in Jabaliya refugee camp, which was being used as a shelter by people forced from their homes by the fighting, according to news agency reports. Ten of the refugees were killed.

Hours earlier, three young men ? all cousins ? died when Israeli forces bombed Asma elementary school in Gaza City. They were among about 400 people who sought shelter there after fleeing their homes in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza.

The UN, which said the school was clearly marked, said it was "strongly protesting these killings to the Israeli authorities and is calling for an immediate and impartial investigation".

"Where it is found that international humanitarian law has been violated, those responsible must be held to account. Under international law, installations such as schools, health centres and UN facilities should be protected from attack. Well before the current fighting, the UN had given to the Israeli authorities the GPS coordinates of all its installations in Gaza, including Asma elementary school."

The killings take the total toll in Palestinian lives since the Israelis launched their assault on the Gaza strip 11 days ago to more than 600. Doctors at Gaza hospitals say that at least one-fifth of the victims are children and that a large number of women are among the dead.

Israel continues to insist that the bulk of those killed are Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, although its claim to be going to extraordinary lengths to target only "terrorists" has been undermined by one of its own tanks firing on a building being used by Israeli troops, killing four.

The sharp spike in the number of civilian casualties came as Israeli troops and tanks moved into Gaza's second largest city, Khan Younis, for the first time today supported by intensive artillery strikes as the military pledged to press on with its attack.

The heaviest fighting has been in northern Gaza, with witnesses reporting wave after wave of bombing strikes across the north of the territory accompanied by gunfire from helicopters and artillery from land and sea. Thousands of Palestinians have been ordered to leave their homes or forced to flee the fighting.

In Shajaiyeh, east of Gaza City, Israeli troops seized control of three apartment blocks and set up gun positions on the rooftops. Residents were locked in their homes and soldiers confiscated their mobile phones, neighbours said.

Three of the four Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire died when a tank mistakenly fired on a building where the soldiers had taken up positions. There was heavy artillery fire to cover the evacuation of 24 soldiers who were injured, including the commander of the Golani infantry brigade, one of Israel's key fighting forces.

Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, said his country's troops would continue their operation despite mounting Palestinian casualties and growing international calls for a ceasefire.

"Hamas has so far sustained a very heavy blow from us, but we have yet to achieve our objective, and therefore the operation continues," Barak said.
The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said the offensive was intended to change permanently the shape of Israel's conflict with Hamas. "When Israel is targeted, Israel is going to retaliate," she said. Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire.

The military said it had bombed more smuggling tunnels across the border with Egypt, in the south, and hit more than 40 other sites across Gaza including buildings storing weapons and rocket launching areas.

In Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior leader of Hamas in the strip and a hardliner in the movement, appeared on the party's al-Aqsa television station and gave a defiant speech threatening attacks not only in Gaza but elsewhere.

"The Zionists have legitimised the killing of their children by killing our children. They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people," Zahar said. He urged Hamas fighters to "crush your enemy".

Another Hamas figure, a recognised military spokesman called Abu Ubaida, said thousands of Hamas fighters were waiting in Gaza to take on the Israeli military, and that rocket attacks would increase. More than 40 were fired into southern Israel yesterday, including one that landed in an empty kindergarten, which, like all schools near the Gaza border, has been closed since the conflict began.. Israeli police said a total of 520 rockets had been fired in the past 11 days of fighting.

Israeli troops are now deployed in and around the major urban areas of Gaza, particularly to the north, in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya. Using leaflets, telephone calls and radio announcements, they have ordered residents in many areas to leave their homes, forcing at least 15,000 Palestinians to flee to safety elsewhere. At least 5,000 are staying in 11 different UN schools and shelters.

The UN said more than 1 million Gazans were still without electricity or water and that it was increasingly difficult for staff to distribute aid or reach the injured. It said more industrial diesel was needed to reopen the strip's sole power plant, which has been shut for a week. Ten transformers have been damaged in the fighting.

More wheat grain is needed for food handouts, and the UN said Karni, the main commercial crossing, should be reopened to allow it in. Four ambulances and three mobile clinics were destroyed when bombs hit the headquarters of the Union of Health Care Committees in Gaza City.

John Holmes, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said Gaza represented an "increasingly alarming" humanitarian crisis, and that the territory was running low on clean water, power, food, medicine and other supplies since Israel began its offensive. Israeli leaders claim there is no humanitarian crisis.

Barack Obama's nomination yesterday of a Clinton administration veteran, Leon Panetta, as the CIA's new director, has sharply split the Democratic party between those who say he lacks intelligence experience and those who have welcomed him as a sharp break with the past.

The rift in Democratic ranks suggests Panetta's confirmation in the Senate could be awkward despite the party's clear majority. It is also a warning to Obama, a fortnight before inauguration, not to take his party for granted.

Dianne Feinstein, the Californian senator and incoming chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, complained she had not been consulted, and made it clear she had reservations about the nomination of an intelligence outsider. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time," Senator Feinstein said in a written statement.

Aides to another senior Democrat on the intelligence committee, Jay Rockefeller, said he shared Feinstein's doubts about the choice.

But supporters of Panetta, who is now 70, argue that only an outsider with proven management skills and an ability to work with Congress can reform the CIA, an institution still suffering from a lack of credibility stemming from the failure to foresee the September 11 attacks, the debacle over non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and the scandal over the CIA's interrogation techniques.

Panetta has taken a determined stance against the use of those methods, such as "waterboarding" which simulates drowning, and has denounced them as torture.

"Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground," he wrote in the Washington Monthly journal a year ago.

His nomination appears to reflect Obama's determination to take fast and radical steps when he takes office on 20 January to improve America's human rights record, ordering the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and ending the use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Only two months ago, in his regular column in a Californian newspaper, Panetta urged the president-elect to do just that.

"Issuing executive orders on issues such as prohibiting torture or closing Guantánamo Bay would make clear that his administration will do things differently," he wrote in the Monterey County Herald.

Panetta's selection also reflects a dilemma facing Obama as he picks his national security team. It has proved extremely hard to find someone with intelligence experience who is not tainted by the interrogation regime put in place by the Bush White House. Obama's first choice, John Brennan, a former CIA agent who has been his intelligence adviser during the campaign and transition, withdrew his name from consideration because he served in the agency while the interrogation programme was established.

After serving eight terms as a congressman, Panetta worked in Bill Clinton's White House, first as head of the budget office then as chief of staff. In the first job he oversaw intelligence spending. In the second he was privy to daily intelligence reports. But he has no hands-on experience of espionage work, apart from a short spell as a young army intelligence officer in the early 1960s.

Panetta will not be the first outsider appointed to head the CIA. George Bush senior was a congressman and diplomat before Gerald Ford made him director of central intelligence in 1976. More recently, John Deutch was a chemist and former deputy defence secretary when Clinton appointed him in 1995. However, his 19-month stay ended in scandal when it emerged he had broken CIA security rules by downloading classified material onto unclassified laptop computers so he could take work home.

EU governments are under pressure to share gas with a growing number of fellow European countries whose supplies have been cut off in the escalating dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

The EU's gas co-ordination group will meet in emergency session on Friday to consider shifting plentiful supplies of stored gas held by unscathed countries to those who are suffering from the ongoing dispute between Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine's state energy firm Naftogaz.

This emerged as the Czech premier, Mirek Topolánek, the current EU president, raised the "extreme option" of a three-way summit with Russia and Ukraine to resolve the growing political crisis.

These diplomatic moves came as Russian shipments of gas to the western Balkans, including Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey, shut down or were slashed by up to two-thirds. The disruption of supplies has also spread to Italy, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, as Russia and Ukraine continued to blame each other for the commercial and political impasse.

The EU's gas co-ordination group comprises representatives from the 27 governments, commercial companies and transmission operators as well as European commission officials. Unusually, officials from both Gazprom and Naftogaz have also been invited to attend as the EU stepped up pressure on both to resolve their dispute.

The Czechs and commission today declared the situation "completely unacceptable" as supplies had been substantially cut "without warning and in clear contradiction with the reassurances given by the highest Russian and Ukrainian authorities". Commission officials indicated that the reassurances had been given by the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, and his Ukrainian opposite number, Yulia Tymoshenko, as well as by top executives from both Gazprom and Naftogaz.

So far the commission has consistently labelled the dispute purely commercial and the EU demanded that gas supplies be restored immediately, with both Naftogaz and Gazprom resuming negotiations immediately.

But as the diplomatic crisis intensified, a top-level delegation of Czech and commission officials and ministers, which met the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev yesterday, flew to Berlin for talks with Gazprom executives later today.

Gazprom, though, claims that Ukraine is to blame for the disruption to suppliers. Its deputy chief executive, Alexander Medvedev, today accused the Ukrainians of unilaterally closing three export pipelines without warning - cutting supplies to one-seventh of previous levels.

He accused Ukraine of being in breach of its obligations as a transit country.

"It is unprecedented in the history of the gas market," he told a press conference in London. "Ukraine is in obvious breach of its obligations as a transit country. We are facing the challenge together with our European partners. We have become a hostage to irresponsible behaviour."

"We hope the situation will not continue for long. It is not just a question of a commercial risk but of technological risk as well."

Medvedev accused the Ukrainians of acting for political, not commercial, motives and demanded the return of gas which he alleged had been stolen.

Asked how long it would be before customers in western Europe would be affected by the row between Gazprom and the Ukraine, Medvedev said: "The situation is really very serious."

He said his company stood ready to negotiate at any time but that the Ukrainians were not at the negotiating table. "Why? You have to ask them," he said.

But the head of Naftogaz, Oleh Dubyna, told journalists in Kiev he would restart talks with Gazprom in Moscow on Thursday.

India's prime minister today accused "official agencies" in Pakistan of being behind the Mumbai terrorist attacks, raising hackles in its nuclear-armed neighbour.

In an address to his country's elected officials, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, offered his strongest views on the three-day assault by "terrorists" which left more than 170 dead.

It comes a day after Delhi handed over a dossier that it says incriminates Pakistani groups and nationals who were involved in a "criminal conspiracy". India has demanded that those responsible be extradited and tried in Indian courts, a demand which Pakistan's prime minister has dismissed.

"There is enough evidence to show that, given the sophistication and military precision of the attack, it must have had the support of some official agencies in Pakistan," said Singh.

He also highlighted Indian concerns that the objective of the Mumbai attacks was to damage the country's recently acquired reputation as a rising world power comparable to Asia's other emerging giant, China.

"Targeting of foreigners, specially from the west, was obviously intended to convey an impression that India was unsafe as a destination for the west and western investments. We need to effectively counter this impression."

In response, Pakistani officials said the Indian prime minister was "not aware of the complete reality". Pakistan's information minister, Sherry Rehman, said that "scoring points like this will only move us further away from focusing on the very real and present danger of regional and global terrorism".

In choosing to blame unspecified "agencies", Delhi appears to acknowledge that the civilian government of Pakistan is unlikely to have been involved. Officials in India have repeatedly accused Pakistan's military-controlled spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, of helping to "design the terrorist attacks".

In the November assault on Mumbai, gunmen laid siege to two luxury hotels, shot dozens dead in the main railway station, fired bullets into a local cafe and killed a Jewish rabbi's family in a faith centre. Nine of the 10 gunmen were killed and much of India's evidence rests on the interrogation of the sole surviving terrorist, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab.

Kasab says that he and nine other Pakistanis were trained by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and a number of retired Pakistani military men. Pakistan's government has said it will close down any remaining camps of Lashkar-e-Taiba and its charitable arm, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. However officials in India say they continue to operate.

The incoming US administration of Barack Obama has reached out to the government of Pakistan, headed by President Asif Ali Zardari, wanting to retain Islamabad's co-operation in stabilising Afghanistan. Pakistani television said the president would be in Washington later this month to meet the new administration.

On a visit to Pakistan, however, the US assistant secretary of state, Richard Boucher, made it clear that as six Americans had been killed, the government was duty-bound to prosecute those responsible.

"It was clear that the attackers had links that lead to Pakistani soil," he said. "The US wants Pakistan to investigate the information provided by India, follow available leads and track down perpetrators so that similar attacks do not occur in the future."

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, today flew to Syria to urge President Bashar al-Assad to pressure Hamas for a ceasefire in Gaza, as the fighting with Israel entered its 11th day.

"I know the importance of Syria in this region and its influence on a number of players," Sarkozy said in Damascus. "I don't have any doubt that President Bashar al-Assad will throw all his weight to convince everyone to return to reason."

Assad condemned the Gaza offensive. "We have to immediately stop the barbaric Israeli aggression in Gaza," he said at a joint press conference with Sarkozy. "Thirty percent of the victims are children under the age of 10, and Gaza is now a concentration camp."

Sarkozy went on to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, where the Shia movement Hizbullah, backed by Iran, has been expressing solidarity with Hamas, but appears unlikely to launch a second front against Israel.

The French president's visits followed talks in Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, where he underlined the EU's urgent insistence on an immediate ceasefire.

In another development, a Hamas delegation flew from Damascus to Cairo for talks on the crisis. Its officials were meeting General Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief, who has brokered previous ceasefires in Gaza and tried to bring about reconciliation between Hamas and its Fatah rival.

Egyptian officials were tight-lipped about the talks, saying any pubic exposure could damage a highly deliciate negotiation. The meeting will be Hamas's first contact with a key regional player since fighting began on 27 December.

In Israel, the government made clear that preventing a new Hamas arms buildup was the "necessary foundation" of any new truce. "That is the make-or-break issue," insisted Mark Regev, spokesman for the prime minister, Ehud Olmert. "Under no circumstances will we agree to a new calm that will allow them [Hamas] to increase their range to 60km so we have rockets falling on the outskirts of Tel Aviv."

Diplomats said Turkey was playing a significant role behind the scenes. Ankara has already publicly offered to convey any Hamas ceasefire proposal to the UN.

It is understood senior Turkish officials met the leaders of Hamas and the smaller, more militant Islamic Jihad faction in Damascus last week. Both are boycotted as terrorists by all western countries.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, is trusted by Hamas because of his Islamist credentials. "The Turks have been talking to all the right people," said one diplomat based in the region. "They are seen as a neutral broker. They are professional and sincere."

In a further development, the UN's special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, Robert Serry, was summoned to New York where Arab countries are drafting a security council resolution demanding an immediate end to "Israeli aggression" in Gaza. With UN forces already deployed on Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon, one possibility being mooted is creating a new one for the border between Gaza and Egypt.

David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, flew to New York to take part in the UN debate on the crisis.

"If Sarkozy has something that can pass the security council then the pressure may start on both sides," Ali Jarbawi, a professor of political science at Birzeit University, told the bitterlemons.org website.

Signs have begun to emerge of the shape of a potential deal on a truce and new border arrangements, though analysts said these were still unlikely to be agreed quickly.

But hard bargaining lies ahead. Israel wants its offensive to end with an agreement imposed on Gaza by the international community rather than a new ceasefire directly with Hamas. "We don't sign agreements with terror," Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, insisted after meeting an EU delegation yesterday. "We fight terror."

Israel wants Egypt to prevent smuggling into Gaza from its border and its crossings into the territory operating under international supervision. It insists on the presence of the Palestinian Authority (PA), run by Abbas's West Bank-based Fatah movement.

"The international community will initiate the agreements and impose it on Hamas," the Ha'aretz newspaper quoted a senior political source in Jerusalem as saying. "The agreements will be with both the PA and Egypt and then if Hamas will not agree it will pay the price, mostly by even greater isolation."

Israel has suggested the US might help Egypt by sending combat engineers to reinforce the border. As well as EU and PA officials deployed at the Rafah crossing into Egypt, as in the past, it also wants US, French and Arab support for a UN-backed resolution granting Israel the right to respond to any Hamas violations.

Under a 2005 agreement, Rafah can only be opened to normal traffic if EU observers and PA forces are at the border, which is also monitored by Israel. But the PA presence ended when Hamas took over Gaza from Fatah in June 2007. The challenge now will be to find a way to allow them back at a time that relations between the two factions are at a nadir.

Western diplomats said the US, EU and Arab League were now looking at a four-point agenda: stopping arms smuggling into Gaza; financial support for Egypt in controlling the border and detecting tunnels; international monitoring, with the UN, EU and Arab forces assisting Egypt; and the reopening of all crossing points into the Gaza Strip ? a key Hamas demand.

Desperate times call for desperate measures ? but there's still a limit. Palestinians voted overwhelmingly for Hamas during the 2006 elections, frustrated both with Fatah's corrupt rule and Israel's utter intransigence at the negotiating table. Anyone who wondered why Palestinians would usher in such extreme leaders need only have looked at how extreme their circumstances had become, and if anything was to blame for driving them into the arms of the Hamas militants, it was decades of occupation at the hands of Israel's rulers.

However, just because Israel deserves castigating for its behaviour over the years does not mean that Hamas is immune from reprimand: attacks on Israel for the brutal occupation and on Hamas for its wanton murder of civilians are not mutually exclusive concepts, and anyone who thinks that they are only makes matters worse ? especially in these dark days of Cast Lead.

Out and out support of those who openly advocate the indiscriminate slaying of non-combatants is inexcusable, whatever the context in which the view is expressed. Yet, in protests around the globe this weekend, that is exactly what was done ? as witnessed by hundreds of protesters proudly flying the yellow flag of Hezbollah and the green and white standard of Hamas.

There is a world of difference between promoting a scheme of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and promoting terror groups whose stated aims are the slaughter of the innocents. Just because tempers are rising among those who detest the IDF for their actions and can't bear to watch the suffering of Gaza's civilians, there is still a line in the sand which must not be crossed. Once it has been traversed, there ought to be no surprise when Israel's supporters batten down the hatches once more, urging on the IDF even louder and effectively giving the troops political carte blanche to do as they please in their mission.

Similarly, the floods of support for Hamas threaten to overlook quite how counterproductively cruel the group's own leaders are. Not only did the late Nizar Rayan surround himself with human shields comprised of members of his own family, he even sent his young son to die on a suicide mission in 2001. Here was a man who advocated, and committed, war crimes at every opportunity, and who also showed such total contempt for human life that he was prepared to put his own flesh and blood in harm's way in his drive to achieve his perverse aims ? yet he and his ilk escaped the wrath of the demonstrators scot-free.

Even if the masses protesting in capital cities from London to Jakarta and beyond don't want to admit that there are serious flaws in Hamas' tactics, Israelis aren't so quick to have the wool pulled over their own eyes, and ? like it or not ? they are the ones who need convincing if the swords are to be beaten into ploughshares any time soon. The collective sense of grief for Gilad Shalit and his family can be felt the length and breadth of Israel; when the same civilians then hear of a man like Rayan who willingly sent his own offspring to die a certain death for the cause, the sense of revulsion and disbelief deafens them to any calls for rapprochement and resolution.

No honest observer can deny that what Palestinians go through, day after day, year after year, is far more painful, far more humiliating, and far more lifeblood-sapping than anything the average Israeli suffers. No honest observer can deny the link between the Palestinians' loss of hope and their resorting to more and more extreme strategies in their struggle against their oppression. But that doesn't mean that every avenue down which the Palestinian resistance travels is necessarily the right one, nor even legitimate whatsoever.

Hamas don't have to fire rockets at Israeli schools and homes. And, even if they choose to do so, they don't have to base their launch pads inside their own civilian centres, intentionally putting their own wives and children in harm's way on a daily basis. But they do, and the same protesters so virulently opposed to every facet of Israel's cruel campaign refuse to raise a murmur of protest, lest anyone should think that by doing so they are taking the enemy's side.

In Israel itself, the conflict is coursing through the veins of concerned citizens everywhere: televisions and radios in cafes, restaurants and supermarkets blaring out the latest developments round the clock, keeping diners and shoppers tuned into the only subject that matters at the moment. Israelis come in all shapes and colours, with plenty among the electorate opposed to both the scale and style of the offensive, and from the keen arguments taking place in every meeting place it is clear that there is by no means a consensus opinion on the latest developments. To tar all Israelis with one negative brush ? and to paint, by extension, all Palestinians as whiter than white ? is an entirely false premise upon which to base one's opinion.

And, by absolving Hamas of any modicum of responsibility for their own war crimes simply because of the conditions in which they're forced to exist, their sympathisers actually reduce Hamas's leaders to the status of mere automatons devoid of free will. There is no justification for attacking civilians: not in international law, religious law, nor any basic code of ethics. When the Israeli army launch attacks on civilian targets, they are rightly hauled over the coals for doing so ? yet when Hamas and their agents do likewise, suddenly the silence is deafening from those very same apparent champions of human rights.

Those who seek to murder in the name of their cause are to be condemned, whatever camp they are in: that has to be the bottom line. When, as now, there are those so blinded by their rage that they refuse to condemn one side's crimes simply because they hate the other so much, then the gloves are off and the rulebook is tossed out the window. Flying the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas is an appalling way to make a point from the sidelines ? and, in the long term, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will gain from such vicious displays of extremism.

Plans to surround a Rio de Janeiro slum with a 650-metre-long concrete barrier have come under fire from environmentalists and human rights activists.

Authorities say the R$1m (£300,000) "eco-barrier", which will encircle part of the famous Dona Marta slum in southern part of the city, is intended to protect the nearby Atlantic rainforest from illegal occupation as well as improve security and living conditions for slum residents.

As tenders for construction of the 3-metre-high (10ft) wall opened yesterday, critics claimed the project was a form of "social apartheid", comparing it to ­Israel's security barrier.

"This is something that is very similar to what Israel does to the Palestinians and to what happened in South Africa," said Mauricio Campos, from the Rio human rights group Network of Communities Against Violence.

He said a wall would serve only to "segregate" slum residents from the rest of society.

The wall is expected to be completed by the end of this year and, according to reports in the local press, may be followed by similar barriers around Rio's other slums, know as favelas.

In a statement, the state governor, Sergio Cabral, who ordered the "eco-limit" fence to be built, said it was part of moves by his administration to improve living standards and protect slum residents from the armed gangs that control many of Rio's 600 or so slums.

"What has happened in Rio de Janeiro over the last two decades has been the passivity of authorities in relation to the uncontrolled growth of the slums," he said.

Such walls would, Cabral said, help the city deal with "drug trafficking and vigilantes, [by] putting limits on uncontrolled growth".

Dona Marta is home to an estimated 7,500 people. The favela was the setting for an award-winning documentary about cocaine by the British film-maker Angus Macqueen, as well as a 1996 Michael Jackson music video directed by Spike Lee.

Jackson's producers were forced to negotiate access with the local drug traffickers. Since last November, however, the shantytown has been under 24-hour police occupation as part of a state government initiative to make Dona Marta a "model favela". In December, Rio's security secretary boasted that the slum was "free from the law of the rifle".

The pilot project aims to rid the favelas of traffickers using a mixture of military force and "hearts and minds" community policing. A football pitch was recently opened in Dona Marta as part of a R$40m redevelopment programme, which includes building new houses and installing wireless internet, as well as the controversial wall.

Rio's environmentalists have given a frosty reception to the plans, arguing that unless low-cost housing options are given to the poor, they will continue to encroach on the hillsides of the city and into the surrounding rainforest.

"It is hypocrisy to talk about protecting the Atlantic rainforest without considering the issues of housing and transport to take the pressure off the forest," Sergio Ricardo, a leading environmental campaigner in Rio, told the Jornal do Brasil newspaper.

Cabral said the redevelopment plans showed the city government was investing in Rio "like never before".

Plans to erect walls around Rio's sprawling slums first surfaced in 2004, but were abandoned after a public outcry.

The Sunday Telegraph chief foreign correspondent, Colin Freeman, has written today about the moment he and a Spanish colleague were betrayed and kidnapped by their Kalashnikov-wielding bodyguards in Somalia.

Freeman and photographer José Cendon were freed on Sunday after being abducted in November in the northern Puntland region while reporting on piracy in the area.

The British journalist today detailed the terrifying moments his 40-day ordeal as a hostage began, confirming that he and Cendon were kidnapped by bodyguards they paid $20 a day.

"Heading from our hotel in the Somali port of Bossaso to the airport for our flight home, the pickup truck carrying our armed escort of eight Kalashnikov-toting gunmen suddenly pulled ahead of us, one of them cocking his weapon and flashing a vicious snarl in the direction of the driver of our own car," Freeman wrote in today's Daily Telegraph.

"For a fleeting second I thought they were just having a bad-tempered argument over which road to take: in wild, lawless Somalia, the people you hire to protect you are often only just on the side of the angels, as volatile and scary as anybody else. Then, as his companions leapt out of the pickup and surrounded us, forcing open the doors of our car and pointing their guns in our faces, came the awful realisation that this time, we'd backed the wrong side altogether."

Freeman went on to detail how his captors repeatedly hit him on the back of the head with rifle butts as he tried to talk to Cendon and reach for his mobile phone.

"For a brief, mad moment I considered trying to lean forward and jerk the steering wheel, gamely imagining the pickup rolling over and conveniently incapacitating everybody onboard except José and myself," he wrote.

The pair were driven out of the shanty town around Bossaso and across the desert at high speed with a jacket covering their heads to a mountain cave where they were held captive.

Freeman said that he initially he feared his captors would be Islamic extremists and that he would be executed. He also thought about the ordeal of other reporters he knew who had been kidnapped.

"Grim memories of the half-dozen colleagues who were abducted in Iraq danced into my head. While all had been eventually released, some had been held for months, their haunted, terrified faces paraded on terrorist video nasties released on the internet. Would I end up like them?," he wrote.

Speaking from the Spanish embassy in Nairobi, Freeman told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that despite the terrifying events of their kidnap he and Cendon quickly built up a "good rapport" with their kidnappers.

Asked if he feared for his life, Freeman said: "Obviously you do in a situation like that. However, saying that they were very keen to keep us alive and as time went on, pretty much from early on but certainly increasingly as we were there, we established a good rapport with them and to a certain extent they became fairly chatty with us."

Freeman said that although communication was limited, he was able to talk a little with his captors in Arabic.

He added that it was a "tremendous relief" he and Cendon were able to make occasional calls to their families, but said one of the worst aspects of his ordeal was that the pair were unaware of how long they were likely to be held prisoner.

"You have to summon all your mental strength to cope with it. We were pretty sure that we would get released but you really just have to project it to some unspecified time in the future when you know it will happen. That was one of the most difficult things," he told Today.

After the pair were released on Sunday, Puntland's security minister, Abdullahi Said Samatar, said local elders had secured the pair's freedom and no money had changed hands.

A spokeswoman for the Telegraph, which had asked media outlets not to name the pair while they were being held, declined to comment on other claims that had circulated in Somalia that a ransom had been paid.

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Palestinian doctors are risking their lives and battling bureaucracy to transfer some patients into Egypt for treatment