A large explosion was heard along the Gaza-Egypt border on Sunday as an Israeli military convoy passed through, Palestinian witnesses said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion and no casualties were reported. Shortly after Israeli soldiers opened fire with machine-gun fire on a housing bloc in the area of the explosion. Several Israeli military vehicles moved toward the area of the explosion.
Israel Radio reported that troops pulled out of the Rafah border area early on Sunday after concluding that searches for the remains of soldiers killed in the area last week had ended. However, Israel controls an area of the border, and the latest explosion occurred in that section.
Tensions have been high in the Gaza Strip in the past week, where 13 Israeli soldiers have been killed in a three-day span. Six soldiers were killed in Gaza City when their armoured personnel carrier rolled over a bomb.
Another five soldiers were killed when Palestinian militants blew up their armoured personnel carrier along the Gaza-Egypt border. Two other soldiers were killed late on Friday while searching for the remain of the five soldiers killed in the armoured car.
Israelis favour Gaza withdrawal
President Moshe Katsav said on Sunday that most Israelis favour a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a day after 150 000 protesters rallied to demand a pullout from the territory.
”I have the feeling that the majority of people think that we must leave the Gaza Strip,” the president told public radio.
Katsav, who rarely steps into the politcal fray and has a largely ceremonial role, refused to say whether he personally supported the evacuation of all the 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza.
”These are controversial political issues which the president cannot comment on,” he added.
Katsav also said that a vote earlier this month by members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud party against a Gaza pullout was ”not clear”.
”I do not know if this vote reflected the opposition of members of Likud from a withdrawal from Gaza or merely the unilateral nature of the withdrawal.”
According to polls published late last week, about 70% of Israelis support a withdrawal from Gaza, as envisaged by a controversial disengagement plan drawn up by Sharon, which he is now reworking.
Oppostion Labour party leader Shimon Peres told the mass rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, one of the largest protests staged by the Israeli peace camp in years, that ”this is not a demonstration by the left but by the majority of the country”.
Support for the pullout has been fuelled by the death of 13 Israeli soldiers at the hands of Palestinian militants in Gaza over the past week.
But opponents say the latest violence was proof that Sharon’s pullout plan was being interpreted as a sign of weakness. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP