Israelis blow up flats in Gaza fighting

Israeli troops blew up an eight-storey block of flats and exchanged fire with gunmen taking cover in a local hospital, school and mosque, killing two Palestinians in a town in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.

Later, a nine-year-old Palestinian boy died of gunshot wounds after attending the funeral of the two men killed in the raid on the flats in Khan Younis.

Palestinian hospital doctors said gunmen had fired in the air, as is customary during funerals, and apparently had drawn army fire because the cemetery is near a Jewish settlement.

The doctors said the child was killed by a large-calibre Israeli bullet. The Israeli Army denied that soldiers opened fire during the funeral.

The raid, which left 85 people homeless, came as part of an Israel military offensive in Gaza, triggered by a Hamas attack two weeks ago on an Israeli tank that killed the four-man crew.

Since then, Israeli troops have repeatedly entered Gaza towns, demolishing homes of suspected militants.

The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, asked Israel for travel permits for members of the PLO’s Central Council and the Palestinian legislature – the bodies that will determine the authorities of a Palestinian prime minister, the new position Yasser Arafat has reluctantly agreed to create.

Middle East mediators have pressured Arafat to share power as part of reforms he is required to carry out as part of a US-backed plan for Palestinian statehood by 2005.

The Central Council is to meet March 10 and the legislature March 12.

Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said on Sunday that Israel was reviewing the names of the 124 Central Council members and 88 legislators.

Those directly involved in violence against Israel would be denied travel permits, he said.

In the Khan Younis raid, tanks backed by attack helicopters entered the southern Gaza town before dawn on Sunday and withdrew several hours later.

Israeli forces met fierce resistance, the military said.

Firefights erupted with gunmen who used a school, a hospital and a mosque as cover when firing on troops, the army said.

In one incident, several gunmen were seen crawling on the floor of the emergency room in the town’s Nasser Hospital as shots were heard outside.

Witnesses said the gunmen were not firing from the hospital, but were pinned down by Israeli fire as they accompanied wounded friends.

Israeli troops also tore down a retaining wall in another section of the hospital.

“The occupation army didn’t show any respect to our medical teams and they fired on ambulances and attacked the hospital too,” Dr. Haidar Kidera, the director of Nasser Hospital said.

Israeli Col. Pinchas Zoaretz, the commander of the operation, denied his troops entered hospital grounds, saying soldiers were forced to enter the courtyard of an adjacent school after militants detonated a bomb near an armoured vehicle, sending it flying into school grounds.

Troops entered the schoolyard to rescue the vehicle, he said.

“They are trying to create spin in the media that we attacked a hospital but this never happened,” he said.

During the raid, Palestinians planted bombs and fired anti-tank missiles at the troops, area residents said.

Killed in the raid were Abed Rabbo Assar, 50, a bystander who was watching the fighting from his apartment, and Mahmoud Abed Hadi, 27, a gunman.

Thirty-five Palestinians and two soldiers were wounded.

Khan Younis was targeted, in part, because a Palestinian sniper killed an Israeli soldier there on February 23, said Zoaretz.

He said the raid was also meant to demolish buildings and structures militants use to fire mortar bombs and Qassam missiles at Israeli towns and settlements.

“We also want to continue putting pressure on the terrorist organisations ... to create a situation in which we are on the offensive and they are on the defensive,” Zoaretz said.

Troops demolished an eight-storey apartment building that gunmen had used 14 times in the past four months as a firing position, the army said. Several abandoned structures used by gunmen were also torn down, the army said. Palestinians said 85 tenants were made homeless.

After daybreak, residents of the apartment building rummaged through the rubble, searching for their belongings. Several damaged ambulances stood in the streets, evidence of the fierce fighting that had rocked the town.

The owner of the apartment building, Mohammed Akher, 42, said Israel was only increasing resentment.

“If they thought that destroying and killing people will bring security and calm they are mistaken. It will increase the bloody cycle of violence and violence will bring more violence,” said Akher.

The militant Hamas group vowed to retaliate. “This battle of honour will continue until we uproot the occupation from our land and our people will avenge the killing and the aggression against Khan Younis and everywhere, “ said Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi.