GAZA CITY, 1 October 2004 — Twenty-eight Palestinians were killed — 11 of them in tank fire — when Israeli forces thrust deep into Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip yesterday. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s spokesman said the operation was opened-ended. “What you have seen today is going to continue,” Sharon spokesman Avi Pazner said. “We have not put a time-limit on it.”
Two Israeli soldiers and a woman Israeli jogger were also killed during daylong violence.
In the single deadliest incident in a spiral of violence, an Israeli tank shell killed seven Palestinians near a school in Jabaliya. Palestinian witnesses said the dead from the tank shell blast were all teenagers with no involvement in the heavy fighting that raged through the camp. “The explosion was so big it scattered body parts in nearby houses,” a medic said.
The local Kamal Adwan hospital, which only has 25 beds, was overwhelmed as ambulances brought in the wounded. Two scorched bodies were carried in on stretchers. Two legless men were treated on the blood-covered hospital floor.
Ahmed Salem, 10, who was wounded by shrapnel in the leg, said the tank shell was fired at a UN school. “I was hit and fell to the ground. The man lying next to me had no head,” he said.
Late at night four more Palestinians were killed when tanks opened fire in another part of the squalid camp.
The army’s push into Jabaliya came after Sharon ordered troops to use all means necessary to put a stop to rocket fire that has persisted despite repeated Israeli raids and airstrikes. A Hamas rocket attack on the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Wednesday killed two Israeli children, aged 2 and 4, visiting their grandparents on the eve of the Jewish festival of Sukkot.
Sharon planned to meet his security Cabinet later to consider broadening the offensive, political sources said. Radio reports suggested reserves might be called up.
Condemning the two-day-old Israeli incursion, Nabil Abu Rudainah, an aide to President Yasser Arafat, said: “This is a dangerous indicator which will lead to failure.”
David Baker, an official in Sharon’s office, said: “The Israeli Army activity is geared to enabling Israelis to live normal lives in their communities in that area and is designed to prevent the daily barrage of mortars and Qassam rockets.”
Under cover of fog, two gunmen from Hamas attacked an army position near Jabaliya before dawn. A soldier was killed before troops shot dead the Palestinians.
Hours later, Hamas gunmen killed an Israeli woman taking a morning jog near Jewish settlements and then shot dead an army medic who rushed to her aid. Soldiers killed two attackers.
— Additional input from agencies
