11 Palestinians killed in Gaza incursion

Israeli tanks and soldiers battled Palestinian gunmen in the streets of Gaza City early today, killing 11, including a suicide bomber who tried to blow up a tank, Palestinians said.

In the bloodiest incursion in three weeks, the Israelis left considerable destruction behind when they pulled out more than six hours after about 40 tanks entered Shajaiyeh neighbourhood. Palestinians said the Israelis destroyed three houses and two metal workshops, damaged a school and ripped out electricity cables.

The incursion was the second since the violent Islamic Hamas said it was responsible for blowing up an Israeli tank on Saturday, killing four soldiers.

Israeli media have speculated that the Israeli move against Hamas would involve a large-scale incursion into Gaza, a step the Israelis have avoided during more than two years of fighting.

Three of the dead were in a car machine-gunned by soldiers, Palestinians said. It was the highest death toll in a single operation since Jan. 26, when 12 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli invasion in another part of Gaza City.

Hamas official Abdel Aziz Rantisi warned Israel leaders that Gaza would be "the graveyard for their soldiers." He said Hamas would "continue our holy war to liberate this land," referring to Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank.

The tanks, accompanied by attack helicopters, entered the Shajaiyeh neighborhood late Tuesday from three directions, residents said, and several tanks also surrounded a Hamas elementary school in the nearby Tufah section.

The Israeli military said soldiers blew up four workshops used for manufacturing weapons and exchanged fire with gunmen, and there were no Israeli casualties. The military statement said the operation was aimed at the "terrorist infrastructure in Gaza" in response to the Saturday bombing of the tank.

Israel charges that Palestinians use metal workshops to produce weapons, including mortars and rockets they fire at Jewish settlements in Gaza and Israeli villages beyond the fence. Palestinians say that most of the workshops wrecked by Israeli forces in their frequent incursions had nothing to do with the conflict.

Witnesses said that late Tuesday, a huge explosion set one of the invading tanks on fire, and in a statement, Hamas claimed responsibility, saying that a suicide bomber, Karim Batron, 21, from Gaza City, blew up the tank.

The Israeli military said it knew nothing of the incident.

Iman Shamali, 39, said her house "shook like an earthquake" from the force of the blast, and she saw the tank burning outside. "Bullets are coming from all directions," she said. "It's a real war here."

Gunfire and explosions could be heard all over Gaza City, which was blacked out early Wednesday after Israel cut the electricity supply to the city of about 300,000, Palestinians said.

Shajaiyeh, which straddles the main north-south road in Gaza not far from the border with Israel, is a known stronghold of Hamas and Islamic Jihad forces.

More than 1 million Palestinians live in the crowded territory, along with about 7,000 Israeli settlers. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been gaining strength there over the past year in the absence of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Arafat has not been in Gaza since late 2001, confined to his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah by the presence of Israeli tanks nearby and the Israeli threat not to let him return if he leaves. Israel charges that Arafat is responsible for the violence and has vowed to sideline him.

Palestinians counter that the escalating Israeli military operations and stringent travel restrictions are to blame for the unrest.

In the West Bank village of Jamin, near Nablus, soldiers destroyed the house of a militant suspected in a July 30 attack on a nearby settlement in which two Israelis were killed, the military said Wednesday.