By AFP
Bureij, Gaza Strip : A 10-year-old boy was among six Palestinians killed on Friday as Israeli tanks and helicopters opened fire inside the Gaza Strip after Israel vowed to retaliate for a border attack.
Before the operation was launched in central Gaza, two Hamas militants were killed in an air strike. At least 25 more Palestinians were wounded in Friday’s incursion, including three children who suffered severe wounds, medics said. Riyad Owayssi, 10, stood with dozens of children near the tanks, outside the Bureij refugee camp, when he was fatally hit, medics said. Four other Palestinians were killed, including three teenagers who were in a house hit by Israeli tank fire.
Militants had targeted the troops from outside the house but fled before the Israelis opened fire, witnesses said.
A sixth Palestinian was killed in a later air strike on Bureij, medics and security sources said. The strike, which was confirmed by the army, plunged several districts of Gaza City into darkness, residents said, after an Israeli missile struck a generator.
Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers, backed by assault helicopters, entered one kilometre (about half a mile) into central Gaza early Friday, drawing heavy fire from militants. An army spokeswoman confirmed that the Israeli forces were operating in the Hamas-run territory and had come under gun and mortar fire. “IDF (Israeli army) is conducting an operation against terror infrastructures,” she said adding that the raid was also aimed at forcing militants away from the border area. “There were exchanges of fire between IDF and armed gunmen during which a few armed gunmen were killed.”
Israel has vowed to “settle the score” with the Islamist Hamas group for a border attack that killed two Israeli civilians on Wednesday, following a month of relative calm in and around Gaza. Hamas has not claimed responsibility for that attack, which three other groups said they carried out. But Israel blames Hamas because it controls Gaza, where it ousted forces loyal to moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in June. “I promise you that the response against Hamas will be such that Hamas will no longer be able to act against Israeli citizens,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Thursday. Hamas said such statements clearly showed Israel was preparing the ground for a new military operation against Gaza.
Gaza militants on Wednesday breached the border with Israel under cover of mortar fire, killing two Israeli contractors at the Nahal Oz oil terminal that provides the Palestinian territory with its fuel supplies.
On the Palestinian side, four civilians and three fighters were killed during and immediately after the attack. Israel said it temporarily shut down the terminal, but insisted it would continue providing minimal fuel supplies to the Palestinian territory that has been under a crippling blockade for months.
Hamas this week threatened to storm Gaza’s borders in a repeat of a breach in January that sent hundreds of thousands of weary Palestinians streaming into Egypt to stock up on goods unavailable at home because of the Israeli embargo.
Egypt has since brought in extra troops to reinforce its border with Gaza. And authorities at the Suez Canal have been limiting the number of trucks being allowed to proceed onwards to the border in order to prevent shops there from overstocking in anticipation of another break-out.
While violence threatened to erupt again in Gaza, Olmert reiterated that talks with Abbas could lead to a historic peace deal this year, but that he did not believe it could be implemented at this stage.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that a Moscow peace conference would give a “second wind” to peace efforts in the region.