Israel steps up ops
2003-04-03 19:37
Gaza City - Israel stepped up its operations Thursday in Palestinian territories, killing six people in a helicopter and tank raid in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, as the relative lull that accompanied the start of the war in Iraq further dissolved.
The Israeli army expelled 1 000 Palestinian men of fighting age from their homes in a West Bank refugee camp and told them not to return until they had finished their hunt for militants.
Four of the Palestinians killed in pre-dawn operations Thursday were in the southern Gaza refugee camp of Rafah, where the army mounted an incursion with around 40 tanks and a number of bulldozers, sparking a fire fight.
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, Palestinian security sources said.
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.
Remote-controlled
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 14-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli troops in the town of Qalqilya, Palestinian sources said.
Jihad Mazal was killed on the doorsteps 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, security sources said.
Khaled Rehan, 28, a member of the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, 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.
Hamas activist killed
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.
Also in Tulkarem's refugee camp, the army admitted it had asked hundreds of Palestinian men aged between 15 and 45 to leave their homes on Wednesday while hundreds of troops backed by tanks searched house to house.
But many of the Palestinians who slept in mosques and schools overnight in the nearby refugee camp of Nur al-Shams and in Tulkar town said they had been ordered out in army trucks and told they would be shot if they returned before the operation was over.
Left willingly
An Israeli military source said the men had left willingly and the army had supplied transport for those who needed it.
He said the men's identities were first checked to see if they had links to hardline groups using Tulkarem, in the boundary with Israel, as a launching point for attacks, such as a suicide bombing Sunday in the Israeli coastal resort of Netanya, just 15km to the west.
He said asking the men to leave was a precaution to keep them out of danger during the searches, which often degenerate into shoot-outs with wanted Palestinian militants.
The army captured 11 wanted men in the first day of searches Wednesday and two more overnight, one of whom was disguised as a woman.
Police also arrested three Arab Israelis on charges of helping prepare attacks by the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which carried out Sunday's bomb attack.
And in Jenin, thousands of Palestinians rallied to mark the first anniversary of the Isaeli army invasion of the northern West Bank town to stamp out militant networks. The crowds demonstrated in support of Iraqis fighting US-led forces.