- (AFP) -- Israeli troops killed six Palestinians, including
a baby and a 13-year-old boy, in a Gaza raid launched just hours after
an Israeli army bulldozer crushed to death a US peace activist in the volatile
Palestinian territory.
-
- Some 30 armored vehicles with bulldozers and infantry
forces probed several hundred metres (yards) into the Nusseirat refugee
camp near Gaza City. The raid was launched from the Netzarim Jewish settlement,
three kilometres (two miles) to the north.
-
- The Israeli units backed up by helicopter gunships met
with stiff resistance from Palestinian fighters in the camp, Palestinian
security officials said.
-
- The slain baby was identified as Hannan El Assar, who
was killed by a bullet wound to the head, medics said.
-
- Two other people were crushed under the rubble of a house
dynamited by the army as it raided the Nusseirat refugee camp, just south
of Gaza City.
-
- It was feared more dead could be under the rubble of
the El Saatin family house, security officials said, without naming the
person killed.
-
- The overnight raid also cost the lives of three other
Palestinians, while 15 were wounded.
-
- The dead were named as Fadi Darwish, 13, who was at home,
Ibrahim Osmani, 22, and Omar Youssef, 17.
-
- Three of the wounded were listed as very serious after
being shot in the head.
-
- The latest deaths bring to 3,095 the number of people
killed since the intifada or uprising started in late September 2000, including
2,320 Palestinians and 717 Israelis.
-
- The previous day two other Palestinians had been shot
dead by Israelis in the Gaza Strip and an American pacifist died when she
was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction
of homes.
-
- An Israeli military spokesman confirmed to AFP that an
operation was under way in the camp, but gave no further details.
-
- Israel has stepped up its deadly raids in recent weeks
into the Gaza Strip to hit hard at the militant Islamic groups Hamas and
Islamic Jihad which have their main centres of power there.
-
- The United States, which earlier this month expressed
concern over the mounting civilian death toll from the Israeli raids on
Gaza, demanded a full and immediate Israeli investigation into the young
American woman's death, which the army termed a "regrettable accident".
-
- Shortly after crushing 23-year-old Rachel Corey to death
in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the army shot dead two Palestinians
in separate incidents, a 43-year-old man in Rafah and an 18-year-old man
in Khan Yunis just to the north.
-
- Fellow US peace activist Joseph Smith said Corey was
killed as a group of pacifists tried to block the work of huge army bulldozers
whioch regularly tear down Palestinian homes near the Israeli-controlled
border with Egypt.
-
- "She was sitting in the path of the bulldozer. The
bulldozer saw her and ran over her. She ended up completely underneath
it," fellow activist Joseph Smith told AFP.
-
- "He absolutely knew she was there," added Smith,
a 20-year-old student from Missouri.
-
- The army said the death was an accident.
-
- "Apparently the army bulldozer accidentally hit
the young woman who got too close despite the army's orders to move away,"
a spokesperson said in a statement.
-
- The spokesperson said the driver of the bullet-proof
bulldozer had limited visibility because of the vehicle's small windows
"and he couldn't have seen the young woman".
-
- The driver has not been arrested, another Israeli military
spokesman told AFP, adding that an investigation was still underway.
-
- Israel forces make frequent incursions from their border
positions into Rafah, a sprawling autonomous town with a large refugee
population. Dozens of Palestinians and several Israeli soldiers have been
killed in the flashpoint sector.
-
- Tanks and bulldozers are sent to destroy houses used
by militants to fire on Israeli positions and that are also used as a cover
for smugglers moving weapons through tunnels under the Egyptian border,
the army says.
-
- The densely populated Gaza Strip, where more than a million
Palestinians live in grinding poverty, is sealed off from the rest of the
world by Israel.
-
- The southern third of the coastline is occupied by Jewish
settlements, where some 7,000 settlers live under massive Israeli army
guard, often just a few hundred metres from Palestinian towns.
-
- Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected
by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence
you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any
way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the
prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
|
