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Israelis pull out of Rafah
21/05/2004 07:26 - (SA)
Rafah - Israeli troops and tanks began pulling out of the Rafah refugee camp at daybreak on Friday, residents said, after a three-day sweep that left 39 Palestinians dead, but it was not immediately clear if the operation was over.
Palestinian security officials said Israeli snipers continued to control buildings, and attack helicopters were in the sky. Doctors said that relief convoys could not yet enter the camp.
Israeli military sources confirmed that soldiers were "redeploying" after the operation in the camp, but they said that in principle, the search for weapons-smuggling tunnels under the border would continue.
A senior Israeli member of parliament warned on Thursday that long-range rockets and anti-aircraft missiles might already have been smuggled into the Rafah area, and Israeli troops had to find them before they could be transferred to northern Gaza, in range of Israel.
However, withering international criticism may have had an effect on the Israeli leadership, especially pointed US displeasure, underlined by the US abstention on a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli operation.
Palestinians said the Israeli tanks left the Tel Sultan neighbourhood, the focus of the operation, and hundreds of residents rushed into the streets to inspect the damage caused during the Israeli operation. But Israeli forces opened fire, and leaders urged people to remain indoors, a local doctor said.
Abdel Rahim Abu Jazer, 42, a teacher, said the Israelis left destruction in their wake. " I hardly recognised my own street," he said, as he searched for food and water for his children. "I don't think an earthquake could do what the Israeli army did to this area."
Tanks were also pulling out of the Brazil section next to the Gaza-Egypt border, residents and Palestinian security officials said, but they said it might be a manoeuvre or a changeover of forces, and not a pullout. Witnesses described widespread destruction, saying dozens of houses and the main road were damaged.
The border area is the key to the Israeli operation, aimed at finding and destroying tunnels used by the Palestinians to smuggle weapons from Egypt. During more than three years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, Israeli forces have made dozens of forays into the camp to look for tunnels. The Israeli military said 90 were found and destroyed.
Eight Palestinians were killed on Thursday when helicopters and tanks targeted groups of militants. One of the dead was a local Hamas leader who was about to plant explosives when he was killed in a missile strike.
In all, 39 Palestinians were killed during the operation, including 10 who died when an Israeli tank shell exploded on Wednesday in a crowd of demonstrators.
Israel raided the refugee camp less than a week after Palestinian militants killed 13 soldiers in Gaza, seven of them along the Egyptian border.
In the West Bank, troops shot and killed three Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy and a local Hamas leader, in separate clashes. In the incident involving the boy, the army said soldiers opened fire at someone throwing a firebomb.
- AP
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