GAZA CITY, 23 April 2004 — Two young Palestinian girls and a teenager were killed yesterday while another 30 Palestinians were shot and wounded during an Israeli incursion in Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said.
Mona Abu Tabak, nine, died in hospital after being shot in the chest, while four-year-old Asmaa Abu Kleyk, died of tear gas inhalation inside her room, said Dr. Mahmoud Alaa Assala at nearby Jabalya hospital.
A 16-year-old Palestinian was also killed during the Israeli Army operation and some 30 others were shot and wounded, the hospital sources said.
Palestinian security sources said soldiers opened fire at stone-throwing demonstrators as they were withdrawing from Beit Lahiya after an incursion launched on Tuesday and in which 15 Palestinians have now been killed.
Most of the troops were pulled out and only a small unit stayed behind to prevent Palestinian militants in the area firing rockets at Israeli targets, according to the army.
The Palestinian sources said several hectares (acres) of agricultural land were leveled during the invasion, one building housing a center for handicapped people dynamited and one civilian house destroyed. Ten other buildings, including a school and a kindergarten, were partially destroyed or damaged.
The army spokesman confirmed that the handicapped center, which was unoccupied at the time, was blown up as “it had been repeatedly used by terrorists to fire at our forces.”
He said the raid aimed to “put an end to the firing of Qassam rockets and mortar bombs by terrorists at Israeli communities,” in and outside the Gaza Strip.
The armed wing of the Hamas resistance movement - the Ezzedin Al-Qassam Brigades that manufactures the makeshift rockets - claimed it had fired “30 Qassam, mortars and other explosives Tuesday and Wednesday.”
Palestinian security sources also said an explosion of unknown origin rocked the Deir Al-Balah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday morning.
There were no reports of injuries but the sources said the army was razing agricultural land there.
In the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, the same sources said at least 25 Israeli armored vehicles took part in a raid which ended yesterday morning and left fifteen houses razed to the ground.
Thousands of Palestinians turned out in Tulkarm yesterday for the funerals of three local leaders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades movement after they were killed in a shootout with Israeli troops.
Schools and shops were closed for the day in an unofficial general strike as around 10,000 residents of the northern West Bank town paid their last respects to Bilal Abu Amsha, 27, Ghanem Ghanem, 25, and Aiman Bagharneh, 30.
The three were all shot dead in armed clashes which began at daybreak after 20 Israeli armored vehicles including tanks surrounded a house in the town of Tulkarm where the three were holed up, Palestinian security sources said.
Hani Alwadi, who became the new Brigades strongman in Tulkarm after Abu Amsha’s death, said that the killings would spur the movement to increase its campaign of violence against Israeli troops and settlers in the occupied West Bank.
“These killings will only make us increase our actions and operations against the army and settlers,” he told the crowds who filed through the streets before the three were laid to rest.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday US President George W. Bush’s support for his controversial disengagement plan was the most serious blow to the Palestinian cause since the creation of the Jewish state.
“It’s an unprecedented success. Since the creation of our state we have never obtained support equivalent to that expressed by President Bush,” he told MPs.
“The Palestinians understand that written commitments (by Bush) are the most serious blow that they have suffered since our declaration of independence” in 1948, the premier added.
Bush gave his enthusiastic endorsement to Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip but keep hold of most the West Bank settlements in a summit at the White House last week.
He further angered the Palestinians by effectively ruling out the right of those who were left homeless in 1948 to return to what is now Israel, instead saying their “right of return” would be limited to within the borders of a future Palestinian state.
The 200,000 members of Sharon’s Likud party will vote on the plan in a referendum on May 2. A poll published yesterday found a narrow majority of Likud members in favor of the plan.
Forty-four percent of those surveyed in a poll for the Haaretz daily said they vote in support of the plan while another 40 percent said they would vote no. The rest were either undecided or refused to respond.
Extreme right-wing Israeli opponents of the project have argued that unilateral moves such as the pullout from Gaza would be interpreted as a sign of weakness by Palestinian militant groups, but there has been little sign of a letup in the campaign against hard-liners.
