RAFAH, Gaza Strip, 23 May 2004 — A three-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead yesterday in a Gaza refugee camp where Israeli troops are mounting raids against militants and a suicide bomber exploded at a West Bank checkpoint.

Rwan Abu Zaid died of gunshot wounds to the head after Israeli troops opened fire in Rafah’s devastated Brazil neighborhood. “My daughter was just going to the shops. They shot her while she was walking,” the girl’s father, Mohammed Abu Zaid, told AFP after Rwan’s burial in Rafah’s main cemetery just a few hours after her death. “My daughter was three years old. Did she fire rockets, shoot at tanks?

Khader Abu Zeid, uncle of the dead girl, said his niece had been cooped up indoors since the start of the raid and had gone out to buy something from a nearby shop. Witnesses said soldiers had opened fire from a nearby position. “She took half a shekel from her father and left the house,” Abu Zeid said. “We heard heavy shooting and when we went out we found her on the ground, two bullets in her neck and head.”

Israel, which launched the raid on Tuesday after 13 soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip, pulled tanks and troops out of the camp on Friday, under international pressure. But the army redeployed some forces on the edges of the camp.

In the West Bank, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt at an army checkpoint near a Jewish settlement, wounding a soldier and three Palestinians, the army said. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the bombing, and said in a statement it was in retaliation for the Rafah raid, which has left 42 Palestinians dead and hundreds homeless.

Peter Hansen, chief of the UN agency for refugees UNRWA, was touring Rafah to assess damage from the raid and said he heard gun shots while he was in the neighborhood where the girl was killed.

“We have confirmation from the hospital that a girl was shot and killed in one of the two gun bursts we heard,” Hansen said.

Violence in Gaza has risen since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed evacuating troops and Jewish settlements in a plan backed by most Israelis and Washington, but rejected by his extreme right-wing Likud party in a referendum this month.

Rafah residents say some 35 homes have been destroyed and dozens damaged in the raid. The army disputes this, saying it demolished only five homes and more were damaged by gunbattles.

More than 1,600 Palestinians have been rendered homeless since the start of the incursion, Hansen said. Roads in the camp are pocked by huge craters after being plowed up by army bulldozers and many houses have bullet holes.

“We don’t even know what this is, a tank shell or a missile from the sky,” resident Hikmat Al-Arta said, pointing to a gaping hole in a wall in her house. She then pulled out of a closet a child’s jacket, ridden with bullet holes.

“Everything was broken up on top of us. Everything was ruined. We don’t have another house to go to,” Al-Arta said.

Residents harangued Hansen for the international community’s failure to pressure Israel into stopping its campaign, which thus far has turned up two tunnels the army said were used for smuggling weapons from Egypt.

Israeli Army Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Yaalon said on public television late Friday that despite the troop pullback, the operation would “take a few more days”. In the Tal Al-Sultan neighborhood Israeli troops were gone but tanks flying Israeli flags were stationed on the outskirts of the area and army snipers were seen on rooftops.