4-Year-Old, 8 Others, Killed In Gaza
A 4-year-old girl was among nine Palestinians killed by Israeli troops Monday, just hours after an American peace protester was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer.
Israeli troops firing from tanks and helicopters battled dozens of Palestinian gunmen in a four-hour raid in the crowded shantytown of the Nusseirat refugee camp Monday. Seven Palestinians, including the 4-year-old girl, were killed in intense fighting.
Two Palestinian policemen were killed in a separate raid as Israel seized parts of the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The policemen were manning a checkpoint, and about 700 teenage boys and men were taken for questioning to the town square, witnesses said.
The fighting came hours after the bulldozer killed U.S. citizen Rachel Corrie — the first international peace protester killed in 29 months of violence — while demolishing a home under construction near the Gaza-Egypt border.
The army said the windows of the bulldozer are small so the driver couldn't see her, but it added that she should not have been in a war zone, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Monday said he had expressed his condolences to Corrie's family. He told the Palestinian legislature Monday that Palestinians embrace Corrie and offer blessings.
"She was with the International Solidarity movement, and she had gone in January to join that group of activists who are trying to nonviolently help to resist things like the destruction of wells," her mother Cindy Corrie told CBS affiliate WBTV. "She spent nights sleeping at wells in the southern Gaza Strip that were being bulldozed over and she slept with families who houses were threatened with demolition."
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, the Palestinian legislature convened Monday to consider a demand by Arafat to make changes in legislation defining the new position of prime minister. The new wording proposed by Arafat was vague, leaving it unclear whether he was backtracking on an agreement to share power, or trying to save face as leader.
The Palestinian parliament later rejected Yasser Arafat's request that a Cabinet formed by a future prime minister be "presented" to him — one of several amendments to a reform package the Palestinian leader had proposed.
Israeli forces entered the Nusseirat refugee camp about 4 a.m. as residents headed to the mosques for morning prayers and farmers began harvesting their crops to take to the Gaza City market, witnesses said.
The main target of the raid was Mohammed Saafen, 34, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group in central Gaza. Undercover troops surrounded the Saafen family's four-story house, and ordered residents to come out, said a neighbor, Hazem Khatib. All did, except for the wanted man who shot at troops, drawing return fire, the neighbor said.
Saafen's 75-year-old father suffered a gunshot wound in the leg. Several neighbors, including Khatib, claimed the elderly man was deliberately shot by a soldier trying to force the fugitive to surrender. The army had no comment.
The wanted man was killed in the gun battle, and soldiers blew up the house.
Fighting also erupted elsewhere in the camp, with troops firing machine guns from helicopters and tanks toward gunmen hiding in alleys and shacks.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment, but has said in the past that Palestinian militants put civilians at risk by firing from crowded neighborhoods.
In all, seven Palestinians were killed in Nusseirat — four gunmen, two teenage boys ages 13 and 17, and the 4-year-old girl. Hospital officials said 25 residents were wounded.
The military said Mohammed Saafen, until a year ago a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to Arafat's Fatah movement, was involved in attacks on Israelis, including bombings, mortar fire and shooting ambushes.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops seized a 1.6-square-mile area of Beit Lahiya, a Gaza town from which Palestinians have frequently fired small, homemade rockets at Israeli border towns.
Two Palestinian policemen manning a roadblock in Beit Lahiya were killed by tank fire, doctors said. Soldiers ordered teenage boys and men out of their homes, and by midmorning about 700 were assembled in the town square for questioning, said Husseini Jamal, a spokesman for the regional government.
In the West Bank town of Jenin, troops backed by some 20 armored vehicles entered the town and began doing house-to-house searches for militants, residents and officials said. Gun battles erupted in the town's eastern neighborhood, a stronghold for militants. No casualties were reported.
Symbolic funerals were held Monday for Corrie, a 23-year-old student from Olympia, Wash., in the Rafah refugee camp and in Gaza City. Corrie was among eight foreigners protesting an Israeli house demolition in the camp.
Israeli military spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal said Corrie's death was an accident. The military said soldiers were looking for weapons and tunnels — routine operations in that area.
A friend of Corrie, Charles Smith, said Monday that Corrie had sat down in front of the bulldozer when the driver scooped her up with the earth, dumped her on the ground and ran over her twice. Smith said Corrie was dressed in a bright orange jacket with reflective stripes.
"We are proud of Rachel that she was able to live with her convictions. Rachel was filled with love, with love and the sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever they lived," said her father, Craig. "She gave her life trying to protect those who could not protect themselves."
Groups of international protesters have gathered in several locations in the West Bank and Gaza, setting themselves up as "human shields" to try to stop Israeli operations there. Members of the group back Palestinian claims to the territories and consider Israel's presence there illegal.