Israeli troops ripped through Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early on Thursday, killing 11 Palestinians and wounding around 140 during a five-hour-long raid, a day after 15 people were killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel.
A militant from the hardline Islamic Jihad group was also killed at dawn in armed clashes with Israeli soldiers who tried to arrest him in the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Some 40 Israeli armoured vehicles backed by helicopter gunships were met by intense small arms fire when they stormed into the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabalya. Two tanks attempting to withdraw from the fighting fired flechette shells which exploded at the entrance of Jabalya town, instantly killing eight Palestinians and wounding dozens, Palestinian security and medical sources said.
An army representative said only one shell was fired in response to a Palestinian rocket and added that 10 of the 11 Palestinians killed were fighters. According to Palestinians sources, among the three other Palestinians killed in the raid was a 60-year-old man who was critically injured when his house was hit by a rocket fired from a helicopter and died of his wounds as ambulances were unable to reach him.
Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, still filled with the wounded from two recent deadly raids in the Gaza Strip, was bursting with more casualties who lay bleeding in the corridors as the understaffed medical teams treated the most urgent cases amid the tears and cries of families looking for their loved ones.
Hospital head Muawia Abu Hassanein said that among the 140 wounded, some 40 were in serious to critical condition and that 25 were under 15 years of age. ”Most people were killed and wounded by shrapnel from tank shells. We have many bleeding cases and we do not have enough blood of certain types to treat the patients,” he said.
According to Palestinian sources, among the wounded were four journalists from the Reuters news agency, including photographer Ahmad Jadallah who was in a serious condition. During the operation, the Israelis dynamited three houses belonging to Hamas militants, damaging another 20 in the blasts, security sources said, adding that a Hamas leader, Karim Ziada, was also arrested.
In the Jabalya refugee camp, which is home to 89 000 inhabitants, some of the streets were cut by trenches while the entire neighbourhood’s electricity and telephone networks were wrecked. The Israeli army destroyed another two houses in the northern West Bank on Thursday morning, Palestinian security sources said.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat described the Jabalya raid as a ”war crime” and said it augured stepped military activity by Israel in coming days, when world attention will be focused on Iraq. Though the latest in a series of punishing raids into the Gaza Strip aimed at Hamas militants in particular, the attack was
launched less than a day after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing another 15 people.
Among the victims were two soldiers and six teenagers, including the 14-year-old daughter of the US-born head of Haifa’s Christian Baptist community and a 13-year-old Druze girl. Three of the victims still had not been identified. Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials hailed the bombing but stopped short of claiming responsibility for the blast, which shattered a two-month lull in suicide attacks inside Israel.
Sources on both sides identified the bomber as a Hamas militant from the southern West Bank city of Hebron. Israeli public radio said his ID was found in the wreckage and named him as Mahmud Hamdan Salim (20).
The latest violence brought to 3 044 the number of people killed since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation started in September 2000, including 2 278 Palestinians and at least 705 Israelis.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the Haifa bombing but Israeli officials promised tough retaliation. An army representative said that a complete blockade of the West Bank would be imposed as of Thursday night and until further notice, while the Gaza Strip would remain virtually sealed off. – Sapa-AFP