GAZA, 27 January 2003 — Israel killed 13 Palestinians, including a six-year-old boy, yesterday in a raid deep inside Gaza City. Dozens of armored vehicles backed by assault helicopters struck from three directions at a known stronghold of the Hamas.
It was the deepest thrust into the Palestinian-ruled city in two years of a Palestinian uprising against occupation and the death toll was the highest in a single day since 16 people were killed in an October raid on Khan Younis.
Palestinian sources said the dead included seven fighters and a policeman. The boy was killed while playing with his younger brother in Rafah camp, medics and relatives said. His brother was injured.
About 40,000 Palestinians marched at a mass funeral for the 12 men. Some mourners fired in the air. Others vowed revenge.
“We will shed Jewish blood in Jaffa and Tel Aviv,” Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantisi, a top Hamas official, told reporters.
Ahead of tomorrow’s general election, Israel’s army clamped a blanket ban on Palestinian travel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, home to 3.5 million Palestinians, for 62 hours ending on Wednesday.
A 74-year-old former general, Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, is expected to lead his rightist Likud party to victory in the election, campaigning on a platform calling for tough measures against Palestinian resistance.
An Israeli Army spokesman said the incursion into Gaza City’s Zaitoun neighborhood was meant to strike at weapons factories after an Israeli town near the Gaza border came under repeated rocket attack.
But wanton destruction of businesses by the troops did not bear this out. Soldiers threw grenades into a central clothing market, setting some 80 stands on fire, where merchants said losses were significant. The stands had been newly stocked ahead of Eid Al-Adha in two weeks.
Still shaken from eight hours of pitched battle and the detonations of helicopter rockets and tank shells in the night, Fuad Simna looked at the ruins of his metal factory, before the raid one of the largest in Gaza. “I can’t believe my eyes. They destroyed my workshop, everything is destroyed,” he said.
The army said his lathes and other machinery turned out homemade Katyusha-style rockets, more than 10 of which have been fired across the Gaza border into southern Israel in recent days.
Simna stared at the wreckage of a building where 50 of his workers used to build pre-fab houses, caravans and girders. “This kind of destruction of factories prevents hundreds of Palestinians from working. The 50 here will be added to the list of unemployed, when there are already more than 70 percent of people jobless in the Gaza Strip because of the Israeli closure,” Simna said.
“The earth was shaking as tanks rolled into the neighborhood. Helicopters roared overhead. It was a night of war,” resident Mohammad Al-Yazji said. He said the explosions scared his children and they cried.
Israel struck just as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted senior army officers as saying the peak of violence had passed and as Palestinian factions met in Cairo to consider an Egyptian proposal for a one-year unilateral cease-fire.
At the talks in Cairo, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan said Israel’s Gaza operation reflected a need for agreement. “The Gaza raid confirms that we have to reach an agreement because nothing can protect Gaza or our Palestinian people, except if we agree in spite of the pain and the fall of the martyrs,” Hamdan said.
The 22-member Arab League condemned Israel for the Gaza City raid and Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat accused Sharon of being determined to end the Israeli election campaign “with more Palestinian blood.” (Agencies)
