Troops shoot dead five Palestinians

ISRAELI forces shot dead five Palestinians in three separate confrontations yesterday, including two men who crossed into the southern Israeli desert from Egypt, the army said.

Palestinians said one of the dead was a four-year-old boy, shot during what the army said was a firefight as troops searched for weapons smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip.

Also, the US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, sent a strongly worded message to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office over the weekend, saying Israel had not met promises to ease tough restrictions imposed on the Palestinians, a diplomatic source said.

The move comes as Sharon prepared to depart for the US today, in advance of a Wednesday meeting with President George W Bush at the White House.

The Bush administration has strongly supported Israel in the Mideast conflict, especially in recent months.

However, Kurtzer's letter called for Israel to ease its military grip on the West Bank Palestinian cities it occupied after suicide bombings in June, allow Palestinians greater freedom of movement and turn over withheld taxes that Israel collected on behalf of the Palestinians, according to the diplomatic source and Israeli newspapers.

Israel's Cabinet yesterday discussed the possibility of removing military blockades in and around Palestinian areas and handing over the tax money.

Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar said no decision was taken, and Israel's response would depend on cessation of Palestinian attacks.

"Israel's policy is to ease humanitarian and economic conditions," Saar said. "At the same time it is hard to include a dramatic change on the economic front while terrorism continues and the Palestinian Authority has failed to implement any of its promises."

Saar said that the subject would be on the agenda when Sharon and Bush meet.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers killed two armed men who crossed into southern Israel from Egypt, said the commander of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv. Three soldiers were wounded in a gunfight that broke out, he added. The Ahmed Abu al-Rish Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah movement led by Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility for the infiltration. The announcement was made from loudspeakers at mosques in the Gaza town of Khan Younis.

It was not clear how the infiltrators entered Israel, though there is a tunnel network in the region that goes from one side of the border to the other, the military says.

Not far away, in the southern Gaza Strip, army troops entered the Rafah refugee camp to search for tunnels and clashes broke out that left two Palestinians dead, including a four-year-old boy, and 28 wounded.

Palestinians said the soldiers blew up five houses. The army said one house was blown up but other houses were damaged when the army destroyed tunnels. The army said it fired on Palestinians after militants shot at troops and threw grenades.

One of the dead Palestinians was four-year-old Tawfik Hussan Bereka, said Dr Ali Mussa at the Rafah hospital.

Moussa Bereka, a relative of the dead boy, said the 60 people in his extended family ran from the house in their pajamas. The boy was wounded as they ran and died later at the hospital. In the West Bank, Palestinians said troops killed a 56-year-old woman and wounded two other women. The women were taking a side road to evade an Israeli roadblock near the town of Jenin when soldiers fired.