Israeli troops pressed on with their offensive in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday as the United Nations was set to vote on a resolution calling for a halt to the onslaught that has killed almost 80 Palestinians.
The death toll mounted further as a Palestinian gunmen was killed by an Israeli tank shell fired at the Jabaliya refugee camp, the centre of the fighting in the northern Gaza Strip since Israel launched its operation a week ago.
To the south, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl was shot and killed when Israeli troops opened fire from an observation tower in Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
Her body was riddled with 20 bullets, including five in the head, said doctor Ali Musa from the Rafah hospital.
Troops were continued to carve out a buffer-zone in the northern Gaza Strip to keep rocket-firing Palestinian militants away from Israeli communities just across the border.
But Israel’s action has come under fire across the globe, and even its top ally the United States has called for an end to the offensive, although it has criticised an Arab-backed draft UN Security Council resolution on the fighting.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated the US position that Israel had a right to defend itself, but called on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to use a proportionate response to Palestinian rocket fire.
”Mr Sharon finds the need to respond to that,” Powell said before arriving in Brazil. ”I hope that it does not expand, I hope that whatever he does is proportionate to the threat that Israel is facing and I hope that this operation can come to a conclusion quickly.”
Israel’s chief of staff said on Monday that the Gaza operation, one of the deadliest since the start of the four-year-old intifada, could last for weeks. Seventy-seven Palestinians have died in the Gaza Strip since the raids began last Tuesday.
The offensive has sparked deep international concern, including a weekend call from United Nations chief Kofi Annan for Israel to halt the operation. On Monday, Egypt called the incursion a ”dangerous escalation”.
The UN Security Council is set to vote on Tuesday on the Algerian-sponsored resolution which ”demands the immediate cessation of all military operations in the area of Northern Gaza and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from that area”.
US ambassador John Danforth dismissed the text as ”one more step on the road to nowhere”.
”The Security Council and the General Assembly, instead of saying ‘stop’ to both sides, act as the cheerleaders of the Palestinians,” Danforth said.
Dutch ambassador Dirk van den Berg, who spoke for the European Union, said Israel’s response to Palestinian attacks was ”disproportionate.”
Algerian ambassador Abdallah Baali denounced ”the disgraceful methods used by Israel today against defenseless civilian populations”.
The text also ”calls on Israel, the occupying power, to ensure the unfettered access and safety of United Nations personnel… and calls for the respect of the inviolability of the facilities of the United Nations agencies in the field, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.”
Israel claims that UNRWA allowed an ambulance to be used by Palestinian militants to carry weapons last week and that there has been a string of similar incident in the past four years of unrest.
Agency chief Peter Hansen has dismissed the charges as ”malicious propaganda” that endangered the lives of UN staff and demanded a retraction and an apology.
In West Bank violence, a militant from the hardline Hamas was killed by Israeli troops near Hebron, while in Ramallah an Israeli policeman and two Palestinians died during a search and arrest operation.
Israeli media said an investigation had been opened to determine whether the policeman had been mistakenly killed by colleague.
Durimg the raid, nine militants were seized, among them Muzid Sawafta from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades — a radical group loosely affiliated to Palestinian Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party.
The army said Sawafta had been wanted for several years for alleged involvement in several suicide blasts and other anti-Israeli attacks.
In Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp, troops arrested an Islamic Jihad fighter and blew up several kilogrammes of explosives found in his house, Palestinian security sources said. – Sapa-AFP