RAFAH, 2 July 2004 — Israeli troops shot dead a nine-year-old Palestinian boy playing soccer in a Gaza refugee camp yesterday as tanks rolled in to search for tunnels allegedly used by Palestinians, witnesses said.
“We were playing soccer when Israeli tanks ... started firing inside the camp and toward us,” said Bashir Abu Jlidan, 18, a resident of the Rafah refugee camp.
He said Omar Zaraan fell to the ground bleeding. Doctors at Rafah hospital pronounced the boy dead after trying to revive him.
The Israeli Army had no immediate comment on the child’s death. It said Israeli forces were on a mission in Rafah, which borders Egypt, to root out tunnels Palestinians allegedly use to smuggle in weapons or place explosives underneath army positions.
In Jerusalem, the High Court temporarily barred construction of Israel’s West Bank barrier south of the city a day after ordering the state to re-route a 30-km (18-mile) section to the northwest to reduce hardship for local Palestinians.
That decision set a precedent for pending hearings on some 20 other Palestinian petitions against sectors of the zigzagging barrier they say cut them off from farms, markets, public services and West Bank cities.
Yesterday’s High Court injunction responded to a petition by Palestinian villagers trapped by a loop in the disputed barrier around a nearby Jewish settlement on occupied territory.
Rafah residents said 15 Israeli tanks and other armored vehicles backed by helicopters rumbled into Rafah’s Brazil neighborhood, firing machineguns.
The army besieged Rafah for six days in May, killing 42 Palestinians and leaving hundreds homeless after fighters killed 13 soldiers in a string of ambushes.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces mounted a rare raid into the town of Jericho. The army said it detained 30 wanted Palestinians and found weaponry including rifles and grenades.
Witnesses in the ancient town, which has been largely untouched by nearly four years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, said troops pulled out after blowing up two flats and a house.
“This is a dangerous escalation by Israel,” said Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat, a Jericho resident.
Residents of Nablus, also in the West Bank, said troops moved again into its casbah, or old town, closing its entrances and taking over a number of houses in a search for Palestinians.
In northern Gaza, witnesses said Israeli forces moved further into the town of Beit Hanoun, seized on Tuesday a day after rockets fired from the area killed a three-year-old boy and a man in Sderot in southern Israel.
They were the first in Israel to be killed by a rocket attack from Gaza since a Palestinian revolt began in 2000.
Army bulldozers, clearing areas that could provide cover for rocket squads, razed olive groves and orchards in Beit Hanoun. An Israeli military source said on Wednesday troops could remain there for months to stop Palestinians from launching rockets.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to pull settlers and soldiers out of Gaza by the end of 2005 and vows “extensive action” before and after that to thwart further rocket strikes.
