- Israeli forces have demolished the homes of hundreds
of Palestinians, bulldozed swaths of agricultural land and destroyed infrastructure
in their bloodiest assault on the Gaza Strip in years.
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- More than 70 people have died in Operation Days of Penitence,
launched in northern Gaza six days ago after a Hamas rocket attack killed
two Israeli children. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that
the dead included 31 civilians. Nineteen were under 18.
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- Most of the nine people killed yesterday were Palestinian
fighters, but a teenage girl was among the dead, shot in her home. In southern
Gaza Israeli forces killed a four-year-old boy in Khan Yunis refugee camp,
where several Palestinian children have been shot dead in recent weeks.
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- Last night the Israeli army said it had killed a Palestinian
gunman who had tried to infiltrate a nearby settlement. Early today an
Israeli missile strike in Jabaliya killed one Palestinian militant and
wounded two others.
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- But shielded from view is the suffering of about 50,000
Palestinians trapped in areas seized by hundreds of Israeli troops, backed
by about 200 tanks and armoured vehicles.
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- Palestinians in the Israeli-held areas, including parts
of Jabaliya refugee camp and the small town of Beit Hanoun, described by
telephone the widespread destruction and desperate living conditions.
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- Armoured bulldozers had demolished scores, possibly hundreds,
of homes, they said. Thousands of people had spent days without electricity
and water, although power was restored sporadically yesterday. Residents
said that the destruction of sewage systems had contaminated the water
supplies in some areas.
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- "I can hear shooting now," said Hanna Basyouni,
35, who has seven children, speaking from an occupied section of Jabaliya.
"I see the tanks below me. The tanks and the bulldozers are 50 metres
away from my home. I can see them shooting right now."
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- Mrs Basyouni lives on the edge of Jabaliya where, she
said, the Israeli army had bulldozed greenhouses that had been families'
only source of income for several generations.
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- The Israeli military says it is clearing a six-mile-wide
buffer zone to stop Hamas launching rockets across the border. But yesterday
the Islamist group fired two missiles into Israel. "There's not one
tree left for as far as I can see," said Mrs Basyouni. "Five
or six homes around me are completely bulldozed, and I can't be sure how
many beyond that. My sister's home was destroyed ... [She] is living in
a tent. She has nine children."
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- Ambulance drivers, the only Palestinians permitted to
cross into the occupied areas, confirmed the scale of the destruction.
Abid Ahmed Abu Mohammed, a driver for Kamal Odwan hospital, said: "We
saw at least 50 houses bulldozed on the edge of Jabaliya and many inside
the camp.
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- "I think most of the bulldozing was to make way
for the tanks. There are main roads but the Israelis were afraid to use
them because of mines. The bulldozers ... destroyed whatever was in their
way - entire streets."
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- The Israeli army said it had destroyed or damaged a "small
number" of homes, either because its soldiers had been attacked or
to allow its tanks to avoid booby-trapped roads.
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- Many people are without water in Beit Hanoun, a town
of 15,000 near the border with Israel. Aref Azaneed, a ministry of agriculture
inspector, said: "The water and the sewage lines are near each other.
When the tanks destroy them, they mix. The water from the tap has sewage
in it."
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- Over the past three years the army has levelled 60% of
Beit Hanoun's agricultural land, destroying its wealth and the main source
of citrus fruit and olives in the Gaza Strip.
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- "Nobody comes in, nobody goes out," Mr Azaneed
said. "We can only move inside Beit Hanoun, and in a very careful
way. There are about 40 tanks about 30 metres from houses close to Salahadin
Road."
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- A UN official said yesterday Israel had wrongly accused
Hamas militants of using a UN ambulance to carry rockets, while Israeli
officials renewed accusations that Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian
refugees, was harbouring terrorists, the Associated Press reported.
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- Israel has demanded the UN investigate the actions of
Peter Hansen, its top official in Gaza, after its army released video footage
from an unmanned aircraft that reportedly showed militants loading a rocket
into a UN vehicle in Gaza.
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- The UN says the footage shows a worker loading a stretcher
into the vehicle. On Monday Mr Hansen wrote to the Israeli foreign minister,
Silvan Shalom, accusing Israel of inventing the story.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1319776,00.html
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