Israeli army kills three Palestinians as search ends

ISRAELI army forces killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip yesterday as they wound up a search for weapons-smuggling tunnels in a southern refugee camp on the border with Egypt.

Violence has surged in Gaza since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he planned to pull out soldiers and settlers by the end of 2005, leading Palestinian militants and the army to vie for supremacy before the withdrawal.

In the West Bank, Palestinian militants publicly machine-gunned a "collaborator" with Israel before hundreds of approving spectators in a town square.

Residents in Gaza's Rafah refugee camp said Israeli soldiers shot dead scrap dealer Yasser al-Arja, 25, as he was picking through rubble near the border.

An army spokesman said soldiers withdrawing from Rafah came under fire from militants armed with anti- tank missiles, grenades and automatic weapons and shot back, hitting a gunman.

During the raid, troops discovered a shaft leading to a tunnel that had been dug under abandoned structures, the spokesman said. Witnesses said Israeli forces demolished six houses after ordering Palestinian families to leave. Under Sharon's withdrawal plan, Israel will hold on to a border corridor at Rafah until arrangements are in place to stop arms smuggling.

Also yesterday, soldiers killed a Palestinian who approached them in the Jewish settlement of Netzer Hazani in southern Gaza, Israeli military sources said.

Palestinian medics said the 45-year-old man was unarmed and may have been a farmer from a nearby village. In the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, Israeli army gunfire killed a 22-year-old Palestinian civilian, residents said.

In the West Bank town of Qabatiya, four gunmen from an armed group in President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement executed a man accused of betraying the whereabouts of wanted militants to Israeli forces and of sexually molesting his two daughters.

Father-of-two Muhammad Rafiq Daraghmeh, 45, was riddled with automatic fire after he answered "yes" to both accusations and a throng of onlookers chanted, "Kill him, kill him".

Militant groups have killed at least 30 fellow Palestinians accused of being informers for Israel.