GAZA CITY, 14 October — Israeli troops killed six Palestinians yesterday including a woman, raided a refugee camp and demolished houses in the occupied territories.
The troops killed two Palestinians in southern Israel, who they alleged, had sneaked across the Egyptian border. Palestinian medical sources said four-year-old Tawfiq Bereka was killed by falling debris as Israeli soldiers dynamited a house with a charge so strong it destroyed his home and the one next door in Rafah.
Another 25 people were injured in the blast, set off by Israeli forces searching tunnels for weapons. Palestinian officials said that 55 houses were damaged in the explosion.
Among the injured were Tawfiq’s 40-day-old sister Narim and his grandfather, medics said. Two pregnant women were also hurt in the overnight raid, which ended at 6:30 a.m. (0430 GMT).
Earlier yesterday, another Palestinian was shot dead in the town as Israeli troops undertook searches in the area, using tanks and bulldozers. Ibrahim Al-Ghuti, 26, died after being hit in the abdomen by gunfire from Israeli tanks, medics said.
A Palestinian woman was killed and two girls were wounded when an Israeli tank opened fire with a heavy machine gun on a taxi near the northern West Bank town of Jenin.
Yisrah Sawalha, 40, was killed when the tank fire hit her taxi near the village of Bir Al-Basha, around five km southwest of Jenin, the medics said.
A sixth Palestinian, Mohammed Abayat, 25, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in an explosion in a telephone booth near Bethlehem, Palestinian witnesses said. Kamal Ahmed, secretary-general of Fatah’s Bethlehem branch, said Abayat was assassinated by Israeli troops. The Israeli Army yesterday arrested a senior official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Khaled Bakir, after surrounding his house with a large number of military vehicles.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer has passed on a message to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon criticizing his refusal to alleviate the hardship in the Palestinian territories and to limit civilian deaths, Israeli Army radio said yesterday.
The message was passed on at the weekend, just days before Sharon is due to meet US President George W. Bush in Washington on Wednesday. It criticized Israel’s refusal to improve the economic situation in the occupied territories — Israel has reoccupied the West Bank since June — and to allow the free movement of Palestinians in those areas, the radio said.
