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Gaza raid { October 7 2002 }

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   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53039-2002Oct7.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53039-2002Oct7.html

13 Palestinians Die in Gaza Raid


By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 7, 2002; 11:35 AM


KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip, Oct. 7 – Palestinians vowed revenge as they buried 13 people who were killed early today in a series of Israeli military operations. Most of the dead were killed when an Israeli military helicopter fired a missile in the middle of a residential street crowded with people who had left their homes following an incursion by Israeli tanks.

About 80 people were injured in the attack, which Israeli officials said targeted a large group of militants who were firing at Israeli troops and tanks that had recently withdrawn from the position.

Later in the morning, three more people were shot at the local Nasser Hospital by Israeli soldiers stationed atop an observation post in a nearby Jewish settlement, hospital officials said. One of the people, a maintenance worker at the hospital, was brain dead after being shot in the head.

Meanwhile, Palestinian militants used the flare-up of Israeli violence to settle old scores among themselves, local security officials said. Early today, a group of 20 men from the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, who were disguised in uniforms of the Palestinian National Army kidnapped a high-ranking Palestinian police commander at a bogus checkpoint. They executed the commander for his role in the killing of three people at a Hamas demonstration supporting Osama Bin Laden in October 2001.

The police commander's death sparked a mid-day street battle in Gaza City and an early evening clash at a refugee camp between Hamas and Palestinian police in which four people were killed and 30 wounded, local police said.

Palestinians here were groping today for explanations about why Israeli troops have intensified military operations in the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks. At the same time, they expressed concerns about the potential for fresh outbreaks of violence among Palestinians, who despite their common Israeli enemy have deep political and religious differences among themselves.

"This was an excessive and totally unwarranted use of power by the Israelis," said Ziad Abu-Amr, a top member of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip. He said the Israeli contention that the helicopter had targeted a group of militants was "far fetched. The Israelis didn't find significant weapons or explosives, and how much damage can these people do firing on tanks and helicopters?"

Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi told the Associated Press: "Everyone should know that as our people were not safe in Khan Yunis, so Israelis will not be safe in Tel Aviv. We will strike everywhere."

In the past three weeks, more than 17 Palestinians have been killed and 60 injured in the Gaza Strip during intensified, almost daily Israeli military operations. Abu-Amr said that many Palestinian analysts believe that Israel is trying to "tranquilize, pacify and destroy parts of the Gaza Strip before the war with Iraq starts, so when it starts, they have a free hand" to operate here without stiff resistance and focus the Israeli military attention more squarely on Iraq.

Israeli military officials said that the attacks on areas of Khan Yunis – the second largest city in the Gaza Strip with about 100,000 residents – targeted neighborhoods considered strongholds of Hamas, a radical Islamic group that has asserted credit for many of the biggest suicide bombing attacks against Israeli in the past two years.

The operations – which included about 40 tanks accompanied by several bulldozers and supported by helicopters – began about midnight and continued until about daybreak. Israeli troops entered the city from the east near the Al Katiba neighborhood and from the west near the Al Amal neighborhood.

"What we're trying to do is go into these strongholds," said a military spokesman, adding that in the past 10 days, 18 mortar shells were fired from the Al Amal neighborhood at the sprawling, nearby Israeli settlement of Gush Katif.

"If we don't go to where they are, they're going to get better and bolder and stronger," he said. "We do know the people who were killed were by and large gunmen."

But residents of the area and Hamas officials strongly denied that, saying most of the people who were killed and injured were civilian residents from the neighborhoods, many of whom had gone outside after the Israeli tanks withdrew to see if their neighbors needed help.

In the Al Katiba area – where most of the deaths and injuries occurred – residents said about 10 tanks stationed themselves in the streets and alleys about 1 a.m. as Israeli troops occupied an apartment building and engaged in occasionally heavy firing with Palestinian militants.

Saed El-Kilani, who was recuperating at home today with a wounded thigh, said residents of the complex were corralled by Israeli troops in his first floor apartment while soldiers took up positions elsewhere in the building. But when the soldiers left about three hours later, he said, they did not return anyone's identification cards.

"When they left, we heard yelling outside and we thought they had withdrawn, so we went into the street, thinking maybe they had thrown our identification cards there. There were hundreds of people standing in the street," he said.

Suddenly and without any warning he said, "There was firing out of the sky and a huge explosion."

"We didn't hear anything – a rocket just came and hit the place," said Ibrahim Abdul Hady, who lives in a building next door and who had five brothers injured in the missile blast. He said that there were about 25 militants in the street mingling with 175 people from the neighborhood when the missile slammed in the center of the street were the people were congregated.

"All of us were in our houses when the Israelis withdrew, and then we went outside to see what had happened and if people were injured and needed our help," said Amer Khalaf, who was being treated today at Nasser hospital with a shrapnel wound to his stomach. "They didn't target a house or blacksmith shop. They just fired directly into the people."

In Al Amal, an Israeli missile slammed through the roof of the 4-story home of the Abu Al-Khayr family at about 1 a.m., wounding three men who were searching for children to take them to the basement. Five brothers and their families, including about 40 children, share the building.

"God knows why they attacked," said Jumalahe Abu Al-Khayr, a sister of the brothers, adding that no one in the house was affiliated with any militant group. "The children were shouting and crying and running in al directions. We will live here now in horror and fear and terror.

Mohammed Abu Dalal, director of the emergency room at Nasser hospital, said 13 people died and 70 were treated at his hospital for injuries sustained in the multiple Israeli attacks. Eight people died in the Al Katiba missile strike, hospital officials said.

At about 8:30 a.m., Dalal said, three more people in an outside stairwell at the hospital were shot by Israeli soldiers manning an observation post at a nearby Israeli settlement. An Israeli military spokesman said, "It's possible in the area of the hospital there was an exchange of fire with soldiers, or it could have been in response to mortars launched in the general area of the hospital."

Meanwhile, according to a statement released by Palestinian security services, Hamas militants disguised in Palestinian police uniforms set up a bogus police checkpoint early this morning in Gaza City and stopped a car carrying Rajeh Abu Lehya, head of the Palestinian police riot unit, kidnapped him and executed him. The statement said the killing was in revenge for Lehya's role in ordering his riot police to fire on a crowd of Hamas demonstrators in October 2001, killing three.

The slaying prompted a prolonged street fight between Hamas and Palestinian police units in central Gaza City at about 3:30 p.m. and another battle early tonight in the Nusairat Refugee camp in central Gaza. Two people were killed and 15 wounded in both incidents, Palestinian security sources said.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company



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