Ten Palestinians killed in troop raids

TEN Palestinians, including a four-year-old girl, were killed during Israeli swoops in the Gaza Strip yesterday that touched off fierce battles with gunmen, witnesses said.

The bloodshed in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza and around the town of Beit Lehiya in the north was a fresh blow to US and British attempts to promote the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace as possible war in Iraq approaches.

Israeli infantry in armoured personnel carriers, backed by several tanks and attack helicopters, rolled into Nuseirat, a stronghold of the militant Islamic group Hamas, before dawn and left several hours later after demolishing a house.

The incursion came a day after an Israeli army bulldozer killed an American woman protester in the Gaza Strip as she demonstrated against a house demolition in the southern town of Rafah. The army called the death a “regrettable accident.”

At Nuseirat, Mohammed a-Sa’afin, a local leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, took to the roof of his home after Israeli special forces surrounded it.

“Give up, think of your children,” an Israeli officer shouted at him. Sa’afin replied with pipe bombs and a volley of bullets from his Kalashnikov rifle. He was shot dead.

Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said six other Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl, whose age medical officials initially put at two, were killed during the fighting. At least 12 people were wounded.

“We were all squeezed into one room, hiding, because of the heavy fighting outside. Israeli tanks were near our house,” said a relative of four-year-old Elham al-Assar. Elham stood inside the house with her brothers and cousins.

“A single bullet penetrated the house and hit her in the chest.” Near Beit Lehiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces shot dead two members of the Palestinian naval police, Palestinian security officials said.

The body of a third man was found later. Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American killed on Sunday, belonged to the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM) whose declared mission is to end “Israeli occupation in Palestine through non-violent means.”

The Israeli army said Corrie, from Olympia, Washington, and other protesters had been acting irresponsibly by “intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone.”

It said visibility in the bulldozer was limited and its operator had not seen her.

“The Israel Defence Forces express sorrow and continue to investigate the incident,” the army said in a statement. The ISM said: “When the bulldozer refused to stop or turn aside, (Corrie) climbed up onto the mound of dirt and rubble being gathered in front of it, wearing a fluorescent jacket, to look directly at the driver who kept on advancing.

“The bulldozer continued to advance so that she was pulled under the pile of dirt and rubble.”