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Clashes kill 6 on Gaza-Egypt border
( 2002-10-18 10:51 ) (7 )

Israeli tanks fired on several Palestinian houses Thursday after the army said soldiers building an embankment were attacked by rockets. At least six Palestinians were killed, including two children.

The army said the tanks targeted the houses because the rockets were fired from inside them. Palestinians said the army shot randomly into the crowded neighborhood in this southern Gaza town near the Egyptian border.

The violence erupted as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finished talks in Washington with President Bush and others about Israel-Palestinian violence and preparations for a US attack on Iraq.

During a visit to Congress, Sharon referred to the Rafah clash. "The Israeli army is the most moral in the world and tries its best not to harm civilians," he said.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa said eight people were killed, but Dr. Ali Musa, the director of Rafah Hospital, said just six bodies had arrived there. Neighborhood residents said two other bodies were still in a house but that rescuers couldn't remove them because of continued gunfire.

Two women, ages 72 and 32, an 11-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl were among those killed when tank shells slammed into their houses, Palestinians said. Also killed were a 27-year-old grocer and a 45-year-old man, doctors said.

Clashes erupt frequently around Rafah, with Israel charging that Palestinians use tunnels beneath the border to smuggle arms, ammunition and even fighters into Gaza. Some of the tunnels lead to buildings in the Rafah refugee camp, and Israeli forces have destroyed dozens of structures there.

Israeli Col. Pinhas Zohar said soldiers fired at gunmen who were aiming rifle grenades and rockets at a bulldozer building an embankment to protect army patrols on a road along the border.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the bulldozer uncovered a tunnel used for smuggling weapons when it came under fire.

He expressed regret at the civilian casualties. "We don't think it's heroic to kill children," he told Israel TV, adding that he had reports that "three murderers were killed."

Palestinians said youths threw stones and bottles at the troops, and mourners at a nearby Palestinian funeral fired shots into the air. They said they weren't aware of any rockets or grenades fired at Israeli troops.

"It didn't happen," said Raouf Barbakh, one of Fatah leaders in camp. "They only want to justify this ugly, brutal massacre against innocent civilians."

Salim Abu Jazer, who lives in the camp, hid behind a car when the Israeli tanks began firing. Three shells landed in a crowded neighborhood, he said, and he saw two children fall to the ground.

"One lost her leg and her body was in a pool of blood," he told The Associated Press. "Then I moved to another house where we found a man cut in two while he was trying to leave his house."

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw three Palestinian houses that had been damaged by shell fire. Witnesses spoke of additional homes that were hit, but the reporter was unable to see the entire area because of Israeli gunfire.

The clash started about 2 p.m., camp residents said, and Israeli gunfire could still be heard after nightfall.

The Palestinian leadership called on the U.N. Security Council to "fulfill its responsibility and to protect the Palestinian people" in response to the clash.

At the Rafah Hospital, the emergency room was overflowing.

"I was cooking for my children, when suddenly there was the sound of a tank shelling and there were explosions all around," said Naifa Abu Jazer, 40, who was in the hospital's emergency room, her face and body covered with blood. "One tank shell hit the house. When I started leaving the house, another tank shell hit it and I was injured."

In a hospital room nearby, five children were being treated for wounds.

The clash was the bloodiest since Oct. 7, when 16 Palestinians were killed during an Israeli incursion into the Gaza city of Khan Younis.

In other developments, Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the most visible Palestinian spokesmen, said he would not be a member of a new Cabinet being formed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

At a meeting of his Fatah movement leadership late Wednesday, Arafat said that Interior Minister Abdel Razak Yehiyeh would be replaced by Hani el-Hassan, a longtime aide, according to officials. Yehiyeh was in charge of revamping Palestinian security forces.

Arafat's previous Cabinet resigned last month, as Palestinian legislators prepared to oust them in a no-confidence vote. A new Cabinet is expected to be presented in coming days.

Elsewhere, Israeli soldiers dragged Jewish settlers off a West Bank hilltop before dawn Thursday and removed mobile homes from the illegal outpost of Havat Gilad, where large numbers of defiant youths had gathered to oppose the Israeli security forces. The Defense Ministry has pledged to dismantle 24 illegal settlement outposts.