An Israeli air strike killed four Palestinian militants and gunfire killed a Gaza woman on Friday as Israel pressed its three-day assault, the largest operation in the Gaza Strip for several months.
With the latest attack, at least 21 Palestinians have been killed, more than half of them militants, since Israeli troops entered the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun on Wednesday. One Israeli soldier has been killed in the operation.
The offensive, partly to try to halt militant rocket attacks on Israel, has further weakened any chance of peace talks, already minimal since Hamas, the Islamist militant group, won elections. Hamas is officially sworn to Israel’s destruction.
In the air strike, Hamas sources said a vehicle carrying four members of its group was hit by a missile in Gaza City. An Israeli military source confirmed an ”aerial attack on a vehicle carrying terrorists”, but gave no further details.
Ammar Mushtaha, a Hamas commander who had survived previous assassination attempts, was among the four killed, as well as a bodyguard for one of the ministers in the Hamas-led government.
The woman killed was among a group of several dozen women who approached a mosque in Beit Hanoun, where around 60 gunmen are holed up by Israeli forces, in an attempt to help them flee.
Witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire towards the women as they walked towards the mosque, to try to force them to turn away. As well as the woman killed, seven were wounded, the witnesses said. They also said that at least some of the gunmen in the mosque managed to escape in the ensuing melee.
Reuters television pictures showed dozens of veiled women screaming and crying as they carried the dead and wounded away.
Israeli bulldozers earlier demolished a wall of the mosque, and troops fired stun grenades and teargas into the compound to try to force the gunmen to surrender. An Israeli military source said some militants had given themselves up.
Residents said Beit Hanoun, a town of 30 000 people, was effectively under full Israeli control, with a curfew imposed.
”The operation is targeting terrorist infrastructure in the area of Beit Hanoun and in particular is against rocket launching infrastructure,” an Israeli military spokesperson said.
Hospital officials said a four-year-old Palestinian boy from the town was declared dead on Friday after being wounded on Thursday by a tank shell. Another child was critically wounded.
Pressure on
Despite the offensive, militants in other parts of Gaza launched six homemade missiles at the Israeli town of Sderot on Thursday, wounding at least two people, medical officials said.
In further violence, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian militant in the West Bank and critically wounded his 15-year-old brother, Palestinian militant sources said.
On Wednesday Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security Cabinet agreed to continue Gaza operations and step up pressure on Hamas, a government statement said. It did not elaborate.
In a separate development, Palestinian officials said Hamas and Fatah had agreed in principle to form a new government.
Some sources said the deal could create a government of ”technocrats” without direct affiliation to either faction.
The Gaza assault is one of the biggest in the Palestinian territories since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza to try to force the release of an Israeli soldier abducted by militants in a cross-border raid in June, as well as to halt rocket fire.
More than 280 Palestinians have been killed in the four-month-old offensive, about half of them civilians. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed.
Israel withdrew its army and Jewish settlers from Gaza last year after a 38-year occupation, but tension increased along the frontier when Hamas took office and rebuffed Western demands that it recognise Israel and renounce violence. – Reuters