11 dead as Israeli forces invade Gaza City

Israeli soldiers backed by tanks and helicopter gunships fought fierce battles with Palestinian militants before dawn today in the streets of Gaza City.

Eleven Palestinians were killed, including a suicide bomber who tried to blow up a tank. It was the bloodiest incursion for three weeks, witnesses said.

The raid was the second in Gaza City since the militant Islamic group Hamas killed four soldiers in a bomb attack on an Israeli tank on Saturday.

The Israelis destroyed several homes and metal workshops, and damaged a school. Electricity was cut to much of the city before the soldiers pulled out at 5am (Irish time), about six hours after 40 tanks rolled into the city’s Shajaiyeh neighbourhood, Palestinians said.

Israel has largely refrained from large scale military incursions into Gaza during the last two years of Mideast fighting. The crowded towns make it dangerous and difficult for Israeli troops to operate.

In addition, the territory is fenced off from Israel, which keeps the militants pinned in, and has largely limited their attacks to Israeli troops and Jewish settlers who are already inside Gaza.

However, Israeli leaders have promised to crackdown on Hamas, which is has its power-base in Gaza and carries out frequent attacks against Israelis.

The Israeli media have predicted that the army will carry out a series of major operations aimed at Hamas, though it is not expected to reoccupy the coastal territory, where more than one million Palestinians and about 7,000 Jewish settlers live.

Palestinian witnesses said a huge explosion set one of the invading tanks on fire. Hamas claimed responsibility, saying one of its suicide bombers, Karim Batron, 21, blew up the tank.

The Israeli military said it knew nothing of the incident.

Iman Shamali, 39, said her house “shook like an earthquake” from the force of the blast, and she saw the tank burning outside.

“Bullets are coming from all directions,” she said. “It’s a real war here.”

In the overnight fighting, seven of the Palestinians killed were militants or members of the security forces, and four were civilians, Palestinian hospital staff said.

It was the highest death toll in a single Israeli operation since January 26, when 12 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli invasion in another part of the city.

In addition, 25 Palestinians were wounded, all but two of them militants or members of the security forces, the doctors said. The Israeli army said only militants were targeted, and it had no information on Palestinian casualties.

Hamas official Abdel Aziz Rantisi warned Israeli leaders that Gaza would be “the graveyard for their soldiers”.

He said Hamas would “continue our holy war to liberate this land,” referring to Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank.

The Israeli tanks, accompanied by attack helicopters, entered the Shajaiyeh neighbourhood from three directions, residents said, and several tanks also surrounded an elementary school run by Hamas in the nearby Tufah section.

The Israeli military said soldiers blew up four metal workshops used for manufacturing weapons and exchanged fire with gunmen. There were no Israeli casualties. The military said the operation was aimed at the “terrorist infrastructure in Gaza” in response to Saturday’s tank bombing.

Palestinians said three civilians were killed when troops demolished their homes, which included a metal workshop on the ground floor.

Israeli military officials denied that. Another civilian, a nurse, was shot dead when he left his house to help a sick neighbour, the Palestinians said.

Among the dead were three Palestinian security officers, killed when an attack helicopter fired at a checkpoint they were manning.