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Israeli army kills Hamas leader
01/05/2003 17:22 - (SA)
Gaza City - The Israeli army killed a targeted senior Hamas leader on Thursday after a 15-hour pitched battle that left another 11 Palestinians dead, including a baby, in a densely populated neighbourhood of Gaza City, Palestinian sources said.
The raid came a day after both sides received copies of a "roadmap" drawn up by an international diplomatic team aimed at achieving peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians and a separate Palestinian state by 2005.
Some 60 armoured vehicles, including tanks and bulldozers backed by helicopters, stormed the Shajaiya district at 02:00.
It was not until late afternoon that Hamas leader Yusef Abu Hin, 38, and his brothers, Ayman, 30, and Mahmud, 29, were killed.
That occurred after the army succeeded in evacuating dozens of other terrified people from the four-storey building where the wanted Abu Hin brothers were pinned down.
Army sappers then dynamited the building, destroying it completely and killing the three men, Palestinian security and hospital sources.
Nine other Palestinians were killed during the operation, including two-year-old Amir Ayad, hit in the head by a bullet, hospital sources said.
Abdullah al-Amrani, 17, Ahmad al-Tatar, 13 and Mohammad al-Dahdah, 13, were also shot dead during the dawn incursion.
Rami Saad, 27, Naim Naim, 22, Mohammad Abu Zreina, 25, Nasser Heliss, 36, and Bakr Mhayssen, 40, were also killed and more than 25 were wounded, three seriously and two critically, in the raid on the Shajaiya district, an area under Palestinian Authority control, the sources said.
Among the victims were two oher Hamas militants.
Fadel Abu Hin, another brother of the the wanted man, told AFP during the clashes that troops surrounded the building housing some 50 people, and warned of an imminent "massacre" as the soldiers were opening fire and the holed up gunmen returning it.
There were scenes of panic inside the building most of the day, according to a resident on the third floor contacted by phone.
"The army is shelling more and more. The soldiers are firing like crazy in all directions. Several shells have already hit the building," said Nifuz, a young woman trapped inside.
"There are many wounded inside, but the ambulances can't reach the building. Some people have tried to leave, but it's too dangerous," she said.
"From what I understand, there are gunmen mainly on the first floor, and others outside who are attacking the Israelis with guns and grenades," she said.
She added that the building's inhabitants, including elderly people, women and children, were screaming and crying.
"One old man, Abu Mohammad, kept running around shouting: 'Where is the roadmap, where is Abu Mazen?'," she said, referring to new Palestinian prime minister Mahmud Abbas.
Hospital sources said a 67-year-old man died of a heart attack during the violence.
The roadmap was released on Wednesday after Abbas's new cabinet was sworn in. Hamas rejected both it and the premier's pledge to disarm the Palestinians, and jointly claimed the latest suicide attack in Tel Aviv, which left three fatal victims.
Two Palestinian men were also shot dead by Israeli forces carrying out a night-time operation in the Palestinian town of Yatta, south of Hebron in the West Bank, Palestinian security officials said.
One of the men killed was named as Khalid Nakhramri, 27, a local labourer who worked in Israel. The other man was not known.
An army spokesperson said troops scouting the town had spotted two armed men and killed them in a gunfight.
The deaths brought the toll of 31 months of fighting to 3 206, including 2 418 Palestinians and 729 Israelis.
In other developments on Thursday, the army imposed a curfew in the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem, and arrested eight Palestinians, witnesses said.
They said soldiers had also surrounded the Church of the Nativity, in case some wanted Palestinians attempted to take refuge in the holy site which was besieged last spring when others did so.
A British peace activist from the International Solidarity Movement was also arrested overnight in the southern Gaza Strip of Rafah, Palestinian security sources and her organisation said.
She was acting as a human shield by spending the night in one of the Palestinian houses threatened with demolition along the border with Egypt when soldiers took her. There has been no news of her since.
Romany Smith's detention coincided with an army raid into Rafah, which an AFP correspondent said damaged 20 houses on the Egyptian side of the divided city.
The Israeli army also demolished the house of a Palestinian activist who killed four Israelis in 2001, the army said in a statement.
- AFX
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