BEIT HANUN, Gaza Strip, 24 February 2003 — Israeli forces occupied a northern Gaza Strip town and started building camps in commandeered houses yesterday, killing seven Palestinians in a major operation.

Four other Palestinians and an Israeli soldier died as a result of violence elsewhere in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Meanwhile the head of Israel’s Labour Party, Amram Mitzna, called off coalition talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon after the right-winger inked a deal with a party representing Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.

As the army dug in, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned troops would stay in Beit Hanun, north of Gaza City, until it had eliminated the risk of Hamas fighters firing crude home-made rockets across the border.

But hours later defiant Hamas members fired another two rockets into southern Israel, one of them hitting the town of Sderot without causing damage or injuries.

Israel has reoccupied the West Bank since June last year but has so far confined itself to large raids into the Gaza Strip.

The Israel reoccupation of Beit Hanun began when a column of tanks and armored vehicles, supported by helicopters, rumbled into the town.

Fifteen-year-old Ahmed Eid Assala was gunned down as the expeditionary force stormed in, the security officials said. Another man, aged around 20, was also shot and fatally wounded at the start of the raid.

Also killed was policeman Mahmud Mohammed Hweili, 27, who was manning his security post as the Israeli force entered the town, Palestinian security officials said.

Another was Mahmud Al-Kahlut, 18, shot dead as crowds of youths turned out to pelt the Israelis with stones.

Later in the day, policeman Ayman Abu Shara, 32, and laborer Wael Al-Garbawi, 31, were shot dead by machine-gun fire from a tank in the town’s industrial zone as they were fleeing the fighting.

The director of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Moawea Abu Hassanein, said the bodies of Abu Shara and Garbawi had been mutilated by the Israeli soldiers, and said it was possible the men had been still alive when their throats were stabbed.

He said both men had been shot but also had “deep stab wounds on the neck.” He said Abu Sharar had also had his eyes “cut out” and that his skull was smashed. The army declined any immediate comment.

The army also dynamited six houses belonging to slain or wanted fighters, including several belonging to Hamas members and one belonging to the father of an Islamic Jihad gunman killed trying to infiltrate Israel on Friday.

The Palestinian Authority, fearing the attacks could weaken its infrastructure while boosting support for Hamas, had cracked down on the Kassam rocket-launchers, but officials said three of the 11 people killed in a raid last week were security officers on patrol to prevent the attacks.

The army also said it had arrested a Palestinian cameraman working for Reuters in Beit Hanun “on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities.” The army also said it killed a Palestinian armed with an assault rifle and four grenades shortly before dawn as he approached the Jewish settlement and army base of Netzarim, located on the southern flank of Gaza City. The man was identified as Yusef Abu Sharia, 19.

A Palestinian sniper shot dead an Israeli soldier in the Gush Katif settlement bloc in southern Gaza. The attack in the morning was claimed in a statement by the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Later in the day, army fire on the nearby town of Khan Yunis killed a 16-year-old Palestinian boy and injured two others.

In the reoccupied West Bank town of Tulkarm an unarmed Palestinian worker was shot dead by an army patrol after failing to heed an order to stop his car.

And a 14-year-old Palestinian boy died of his wounds the day after being shot in the head in Nablus in the northern West Bank when Israeli forces fired on stone-throwing youths.