JABALYA, Gaza Strip, 7 March 2003 — Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinians, including some torn apart by a tank shell, when troops stormed a Gaza Strip refugee camp yesterday after a Palestinian bomber killed 15 people on an Israeli bus.
More than 140 Palestinians were wounded during the nine-hour Israeli raid, part of a spasm of violence that has battered US hopes of calming the 29-month-old conflict ahead of a possible war on Iraq.
Israel’s army launched the Gaza operation hours after the first Palestinian bombing in two months ripped through a bus packed with high school students in the port city of Haifa. A 14-year-old American girl was among the dead.
Witnesses and medics said the tank round crashed into a crowd watching firemen hose down a commercial building set ablaze in the raid on Jabalya refugee camp which triggered hours of pitched gunbattles.
Palestinians said the blast killed eight unarmed civilians. Amid the chaos, two headless bodies lay on the ground. Bloodied survivors crawled or were dragged through dirt streets.
Gaza hospitals were overwhelmed with wounded, many of them children pleading for help. “God help us, we are running out of medicine, we are running out of blood,” a doctor shouted.
Hamas, behind a wave of attacks on Israelis, vowed revenge, saying: “The Jews will pay a dear price.”
The Israeli Army insisted it had done the utmost to avoid civilian casualties and said the tank shell had hit a man standing in an empty street, aiming a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at troops as they withdrew from the area.
Israeli government officials said most, if not all, of the Palestinians killed were gunmen. Palestinian medical officials said five of the fatalities ranged in age from 13 to 16 and a 60-year-old man was also shot dead.
Helicopters raked streets with machine-gun fire trying to pick off gunmen scrambling to take up positions. Around 90,000 people are crammed into the camp.
Two Palestinian journalists working for Reuters were among those wounded by the Israeli tank shell. Photographer Ahmed Jadallah was hit by shrapnel in both legs. Television cameraman Shams Odeh suffered a fractured foot.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat condemned the raid as an act of revenge by Israel for the Haifa bombing.
Brig. Gen. Gadi Shamni, Israel’s Gaza brigade commander, said the Jabalya operation was not retribution for the Haifa bombing but a continuation of an offensive against armed men in the area that began two weeks ago.
In the evening, Palestinians fired five home-made rockets on the southern Israeli town of Sderot. No injuries were reported. The Qassam 2 rockets landed in fields outside the town, which lies close to the Gaza border and has been the target of frequent rocket attacks in recent months.
The rocket, built by Hamas and named after its armed wing, Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, has a range of up to 12 km (eight miles).
In Washington, the spokesman for George W. Bush said he is “very concerned” about the deaths of innocent Palestinians in the Gaza raid. “Clearly, there were a number of innocent Palestinians injured in the attack today, and that is, of course, a concern for the president,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. In the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Israeli troops killed an Islamic Jihad activist in a shootout, witnesses said. Israel’s security Cabinet, in a meeting after Wednesday’s bombing, decided to step up military action against Palestinians, Israeli security sources said. Some 3.5 million Palestinians living under Israeli closures and curfews imposed in response to violence fear a tougher crackdown as the world focuses on a buildup to war in Iraq.
At least 1,903 Palestinians have been killed since the uprising began.
