Two high school students suspected of plotting a school massacre has been arrested in plot after Web activities eyed

SOUTH PASADENA, Calif. — Two high school students suspected of plotting a school massacre in a Los Angeles suburb were arrested after investigators monitored their Internet activities and determined they presented a real threat, police said Tuesday.

The boys, ages 16 and 17, named three staffers they planned to kill and said they would target random students, police said.

"They were making a huge, a huge plan of a school massacre," South Pasadena Police Chief Arthur Miller said. "They just wanted to kill as many people as possible."

Miller said his officers saved lives by thwarting the attack in the quaint town of about 25,000 people known for its high-quality schools and community involvement in education.

School officials heard about the plot and notified police, who began watching the boys and monitoring their online activity. They had no weapons or date for a possible attack, but they were researching automatic weapons, handguns, knives and explosives, police said.

One boy allegedly said he had a relative with a gun that he might be able to get. Police contacted that relative, who said that the weapon was secured.

Miller said police realized how cold-hearted the plot was after interrogating the boys.

The two teenage boys were arrested on charges of making threats and conspiracy. They were being held at a juvenile facility.

Miller didn't name the boys or provide information about the dynamic of their relationship.

Police expect to present their case to the district attorney later in the day.

The FBI joined the investigation to help search for evidence on the computers seized from the boys' homes.

Police plan to have a larger presence on South Pasadena High School campus Thursday for the first day of school.

Carnage at U.N. school as Israel pounds Gaza refugee camp

GAZA/JERUSALEM, July 30 (Reuters) - Israeli shelling killed at least 15 Palestinians sheltering in a school in Gaza's biggest refugee camp on Wednesday, the Health Ministry said, as Egyptian mediators prepared a revised proposal to try to halt more than three weeks of fighting.

Some 3,300 Palestinians, including many women and children, were taking refuge in the building in Jabalya refugee camp when it came under fire around dawn, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said.

Israeli artillery that hit our school," UNRWA chief Pierre Krahenbuhl said in a statement after representatives of the agency visited the scene and examined fragments, craters and other damage.

Blood splattered floors and mattresses inside classrooms at the Jabalya Girls Elementary School and survivors picked through shattered glass and debris for flesh and body parts to bury.

"I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage," Krahenbuhl said.

The Gaza Health Ministry put the number of dead in the attack at 15 after a local UNRWA official said 19 had been killed. Krahenbujl, however, said it was premature to give an official death toll.

"But we know that there were multiple civilian deaths and injuries, including of women and children and the UNRWA guard, who was trying to protect the site," Krahenbujl said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said militants had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops shot back in response. The incident was still being reviewed.

The army said it would hold fire unilaterally in limited areas of the Gaza Strip where soldiers were not operating for four hours from 3 p.m. (1200 GMT) as a "temporary humanitarian window". It was not clear whether that included Jabalya.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Hamas Islamist movement which controls Gaza, dismissed the partial, temporary ceasefire as a "media stunt", saying it would not allow rescue workers to retrieve casualties in combat zones Israel had excluded.

Israel has been shelling in Jebalya, where some 120,000 people live, since Tuesday, in what the chief Israeli military spokesman, Brigadier-General Motti Almoz, described as a slight broadening of its campaign against militants in the Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip.

UNRWA said on Tuesday it had found a cache of rockets concealed at another Gaza school - the third such discovery since the conflict began. It condemned unnamed groups for putting civilians at risk.

Krahenbuhl said the Jabalya school's precise location and the fact that it was housing thousands of displaced people had been communicated to the Israeli military 17 times, with the last notification just hours before the fatal shelling.

BLOCKADE

Israeli tank fire also struck the main market in Jabalya on Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding 40 others, the health ministry said. Seven members of one family died in an Israeli attack in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

The ministry said 1,287 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since Israel began its offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket fire.