GAZA CITY, 29 August 2006 — Israeli troops killed four armed members of the security force led by the governing Palestinian Hamas movement in eastern Gaza yesterday, hospital officials and witnesses reported.
A 15-year-old Palestinian teen was also killed when an apparent projectile left behind by Israeli troops exploded in northern Gaza, witnesses said.
Palestinian hospital officials said a sixth Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza Strip.
Witnesses said Israeli troops stationed at the Gaza international airport on the eastern outskirts of Rafah opened fire at a group of Palestinians, including militants, who approached them.
An Israeli Army spokeswoman, however, said the army knew of no shooting in the area, but continued to check the report.
A senior Palestinian officials, meanwhile, said the United States was proposing to deploy international observers at the Karni border crossing with Israel, east of Gaza City.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had accepted the proposal and was waiting for an Israeli response, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine Radio.
Under the proposal drawn up by the US security coordinator in the region, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, some 90 international observers would monitor the Karni passage, which is vital for Palestinians because it is the main commercial crossing for the export and import of goods from and to Gaza.
Abbas accepted the proposal “to prevent security closures of the crossing which negatively affects Gaza’s economic life,” Erekat said.
The crossing has been closed for much of the past two months, since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza to end rocket fire at Israel and secure the release of a soldier abducted from an army post bordering the strip on June 25.
A spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian Cabinet, Ghazi Hamad, said yesterday that the soldier, Corp. Gilad Shalit, was in “good” health. Hamad told Voice of Palestine Radio that Egypt continued to play a leading role in ongoing mediation efforts seeking to secure Shalit’s freedom in return for the release of Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons.
In unusual criticism against militants active in Gaza, Hamad earlier blamed their rocket attacks against Israel for the return of Israeli troops to the strip and for making life in the crowded coastal salient “intolerable.”
“When we have agreements to reopen the closed crossings and terminals, militants come and launch rockets, on purpose, from an area near the crossing or the terminal,” Ghazi Hamad wrote in an essay published in local Palestinian dailies. “Why are we insisting to bring the occupation back to the Gaza Strip,” he asked. “When you walk in the streets of Gaza, the only thing you can do is close your eyes to what you see: An indescribable chaos, careless police officers, swaggering young men carrying rifles on their shoulders,” wrote Hamad, a former journalist known as a moderate in Hamas who was appointed Cabinet spokesman in March. — With additional input from Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
