Six die in Israeli raids

2003-04-03 12:22

Gaza City - Six Palestinians were killed during overnight Israeli army raids in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Palestinian security sources said on Thursday.

Four of the dead were in the southern Gaza refugee camp of Rafah, where the army mounted an incursion with aabout 40 tanks and a number of bulldozers, sparking a firefight, the sources said.

Mahmoud Shaath, 24, was killed by an Israeli tank shell while Wissam al-Shaar, also 24, and Ibrahim Shaluf, 18, died when they were hit by a rocket fired from a helicopter.

Walid al-Ledawi, 19, died later from shrapnel wounds after the missile attack.

Eight other Palestinians were injured, two of whom were in a critical condition during the incursion which penetrated up to one kilometre into the camp close to the Egyptian border, the sources added.

A tank fired two shells and soldiers also opened fire while two assault helicopters circled overhead before one of them shot a rocket towards the camp, the sources said.

Four Israeli soldiers were slightly hurt during the operation when their armoured vehicle overturned after the explosion of a remote-controlled device, Israeli military sources said.

"Our forces combed the sector and carried out searches, then demolished four abandoned houses under which tunnels could be dug to smuggle arms in from Egypt," the army said in a statement after the operation wound up.

In the West Bank, a Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli troops in the town of Qalqilya, the Palestinian sources said.

Jihad Mazal, 14, was killed on the doorstep of his home as soldiers opened fire during an incursion in the northern town, they said. Several tanks and jeeps took part in the raid, during which two Palestinians were arrested.

Elsewhere, an activist with the Islamic radical group Hamas was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, the security sources said.

Khaled Rehan, 28, a member of Ezzedin al-Qassam, the armed wing of Hamas, opened fire on Israeli soldiers when they tried to arrest him at a house in Nablus, and he was killed in the return fire.

The latest deaths take the toll to 3 126 since the start of the intifada in September 2000. The figure includes 2 349 Palestinians and 719 Israelis.

The army said it also destroyed overnight the home in Tulkarem of Mahmoud Marmarsh, a Hamas activist who in May 2001 carried out a suicide attack at a shopping centre in Israel that killed five Israelis and wounded 74.

The army has since August 2002 demolished almost 200 houses in the West Bank and Gaza of Palestinians accused of taking part in attacks inside Israel or against Jewish settlers and soldiers in the Palestinian territories.

In the Rafah area, the demolitions have created an ever-widening no-man's land between the Gaza Strip and neighbouring Egypt.

- AFX