11 die in Israeli rocket attacks

An Israeli helicopter fired five missiles at a crowd of people in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip today, killing 11 people and wounding 29 others.

The army said it had fired at armed militants in the Rafah camp. Residents said at least four of the dead were militants.

Israel was operating in the area, near the Gaza border with Egypt, following an attack on an Israeli armoured vehicle yesterday that killed five soldiers.

Hundreds of Israeli troops fanned out along the Egyptian border today to search for remains of the five.

In three days of rapidly escalating violence, 11 Israeli soldiers and 26 Palestinians have been killed. At least 235 Palestinians have been wounded.

Earlier today, Israeli forces pulled out of Gaza City following the biggest offensive in the area in years. The military said it had completed its search for body parts from six soldiers killed in an earlier bombing, a huge explosion that destroyed an armoured vehicle on Tuesday.

The army left behind a swathe of destruction in Gaza City: one high-rise building demolished, two others rendered uninhabitable, walls collapsed from explosions, hundreds of trees uprooted, Gaza’s main road rendered impassable for two miles.

The attacks dealt a tough blow to the standing of Israel’s military and raised new questions about its continuing presence in Gaza.

Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon has called for evacuating Gaza and uprooting the 21 Jewish settlements there. But on May 2, Likud members – less than 2% of Israel’s population – overwhelmingly rejected the proposal in a nonbinding vote.

Opinion polls have shown that a solid majority of the general public favoured the plan, and Sharon has pledged to push forward with the proposal.

Dovish Israeli politicians said the violence would persuade Israelis of the need to leave Gaza. A similar debate over Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon – a bloody war against Hezbollah guerrillas – led to an Israel withdrawal in 2000.