posted 05-18-2004 03:34 PM            

Israeli Troops Kill 20 in Gaza Camp Raid
May 18, 5:15 PM (ET)
By KEVIN FRAYER

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - Under heavy cover fire from helicopters, Israeli troops combed this refugee camp for weapons and gunmen Tuesday in the biggest Gaza offensive in years. Twenty Palestinians were killed, including two teenagers shot as they gathered laundry.

International condemnation mounted of the operation, and the United States said it was asking Israel for "clarification." The United Nations and European Union demanded an end to the incursion, which Israeli security officials said would last at least a week.

In Rafah, a crowded camp of 90,000 people near the Egyptian border, Palestinian families sought refuge from the rocket and machine-gun fire in the innermost rooms of their homes.

Electrician Khaled Al-Assar, 38, said he sat with his wife and five children in one room of their house as gunfire rattled all around and a missile landed nearby, shattering windows.

"The kids were terrified, there was very loud boom, they started screaming and crying," he said.

Not everyone stayed inside, and the consequences could be deadly. Ahmed Mughayer, 13, and his sister Asma, 16, were killed by Israeli fire when they ventured onto the roof of their three-story apartment building to bring in laundry, their father Mohammed said.

Mughayer said his wife had told Asma not to go out because of the shooting. "Asma said, 'Don't worry, I'll be careful,'" he said.

The Israeli army said the aim of "Operation Rainbow" was to destroy weapons-smuggling tunnels and arrest Palestinian militants. It said it did not intend to demolish large numbers of Palestinian homes. Troops tore down four homes Tuesday, witnesses said.
Last week, Israel destroyed about 100 houses, making more than 1,000 Palestinians homeless.

Troops moved Tuesday into the Tel Sultan neighborhood on the outskirts of the Rafah camp. Bulldozers began tearing up a road to separate the neighborhood from the rest of the camp, and soldiers backed by about 70 armored vehicles conducted house-to-house searches, sometimes using bulldozers to knock down doors.

The army said most of the casualties were gunmen killed by missiles or machine-gun fire as they prepared to attack troops.
Residents said at least nine civilians were among the dead. At least 42 Palestinians were wounded.

Some Palestinians tried to reach safer ground. Thousands have left their homes in Rafah since the weekend, hauling away their possessions on tractors and donkey carts.

In all, 19 Palestinians in Rafah were killed by Israeli fire - 10 in two missile strikes, and nine by machine-gun fire, said Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, a Palestinian Health Ministry official. A 20th man was killed while handling explosives.

Israel said both missile strikes, including one outside a mosque, were aimed at gunmen.
Palestinian ambulance drivers reported coming under fire, and Hassanain said several ambulances were unable to evacuate the wounded.

The army denied soldiers fired at ambulances, and said it was allowing some ambulances to drive to Khan Younis, which has a better-equipped hospital than Rafah, along an otherwise closed road.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat denounced the operation as a "planned massacre."
"What is happening in Rafah is an operation to destroy and to transfer the local

Palestinian population, and this must not be accepted, not by the Palestinians, nor the Arabs, nor by the international community," a visibly angry Arafat told reporters at his West Bank compound.

Although Israel says it is targeting Rafah to destroy arms-smuggling tunnels, security officials have said the army also planned to widen a patrol road between the camp and Egypt, which would mean demolishing rows of houses.

Israeli army chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said homes would only be demolished if gunmen used them as firing positions or to cover up tunnels.

The threat of mass house demolitions drew strong international criticism, including from the United States.

President Bush termed the violence "troubling," but said Israel had the right to defend itself from terrorism.
"The Israeli people have always had enemies at their borders and terrorists close at hand," Bush told a pro-Israel lobby group. "Again and again Israel has defended itself with skill and heroism."

Former Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan said the United States had the power to stop the incursion - but would not in an election year. "If the Americans want to end it they can stop it by one statement, but they don't want to," he told a Gaza radio station.

EU foreign policy spokesman Javier Solana said the destruction of homes violated both the letter and the spirit of the "road map" peace plan. The EU's Mideast peace envoy, Marc Otte, was in Israel for talks with diplomats and security officials, carrying a demand that the Rafah demolitions cease.
U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said diplomats were relieved that Israel had refrained from large-scale house demolitions, but said the military operation "runs counter to the provisions of the road map, it fuels anger and resentment among Palestinians."

Jordan also called on Israel to stop its assault. King Abdullah II told The New York Times that Yasser Arafat should "have a long look in the mirror" and think about whether he is helping his people. Jordan's state news agency quoted a palace official as saying the king's remarks should not be interpreted as a call for Arafat to consider stepping aside.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, meanwhile, described Israeli actions in Rafah as "war crimes."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed a unilateral pullout of soldiers and settlers from Gaza, but his party turned down the plan.

posted 05-20-2004 06:36 PM            

Rising Toll Of Children Shot Dead By Israeli Snipers
By Chris McGreal
The Guardian - UK
5-20-4

RAFAH -- The tiny hole buried under Asma Mughayar's thick black hair, just above her right ear, is an illusion, according to the Israeli army. So is her family's insistance that Asma, 16, and her younger brother Ahmed, were both shot through the head by an Israeli soldier as they fed their pigeons and collected the laundry from the roof of their home in Rafah refugee camp.

But their corpses tell a different story, as do the bodies of other children brought to Rafah's hospital and makeshift mortuaries even before yesterday's carnage, in which Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on a peaceful protest by Palestinians in the camp, killing 10 demonstrators, according to Palestinian paramedics.

Israel disputes the Mughayar family's account: that soldiers shot the children on Tuesday. Hours after their death, Israeli officials blamed the Palestinians, telling reporters that Asma and Ahmed had been killed in a "work accident" - a euphemism for bomb-makers blowing themselves up - or by Palestinian fighters who had left a landmine in the street.

"A preliminary investigation indicates they were killed by a bomb intended to be used against soldiers. It was set outside a building by Palestinians to hit an Israeli vehicle. This is probably what happened," a military spokesman said yesterday.

Dr Ali Moussa, head of Rafah hospital, is as furious at the claim as he is at Israel's assertion that almost all the 20 or more people killed during the army's seizure of the Tel al-Sultan district of the Rafah refugee camp were armed men.

"They are liars, liars, liars, because these children have bullet wounds to the head. There is no doubt about it," he says.

Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaria, who pronounced the Mughayar children dead, insists on proving the manner of their killing. He pulls Asma's body from the mortuary's refrigeration unit and fumbles through the teenager's hair to reveal the hole where the bullet entered above one ear and ripped a much larger wound as it emerged above the other.

"The Israeli propaganda is that they were killed in a work accident. These are the kinds of lies they tell all the time," he says. "They say all the dead are fighters. They say they do not deliberately kill children, but about a quarter of the dead from the first day of shooting are children. The evidence is here in the morgue. Does this girl look as if she was blown up by a bomb?"

Asma's body lies in the hospital mortuary unburied, like all the other dead from Tel al-Sultan, because their relatives are trapped in their homes by a curfew. Her 13-year-old brother's corpse is a short drive away in the cold-storage room of an Israeli-owned flower-growing company.

Small boy

Ahmed lies with 14 other bodies. Some are wrapped in the flags of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, but Ahmed is swaddled only in the white sheet wrapped around him in the ambulance. He was a small boy who could not easily be mistaken for a man.

Dr Nkaria rolls the child over to show a tiny round hole in his forehead, just above his fringe. There is a much larger hole at the back of the head where the bullet came out. Neither Asma nor Ahmed show signs of any other injuries, particularly of the kind that might be expected from a blast, such as shrapnel spread across the body, burns, or mutilation.

"This is what the Israelis claim is a 'work accident'," Dr Nkaria says.

He points to the corpse of another youth in the cold-store."This is Ibrahim Alqun. He is 14 years old. He was shot in the back of the head. The bullet came out of his right eye," he says. The child's face is badly mutilated by the wound.

The bodies of the children continued to pile up in the mortuary yesterday.

Saber Abu Libda, 13, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he left his home in Tel al-Sultan in the morning to find water for his family.

Dr Nkaria's finger probes a tiny hole in the small child's back which masks the devastation done to his heart as the bullet shot through it.

"No one can say this child was a fighter. Look at the size of him and look where they shoot him - in the back, not coming to attack someone," the doctor says.

Saber stepped out of the door with his 16-year-old brother Yousef. He too was shot, but has survived so far, with critical chest injuries.

A third brother, Ayub, ran out to save his younger siblings and was also cut down by the snipers.

"My brothers only went out for water," Ayub says.

"We heard the gunshots and I went to their rescue. They were both lying there bleeding and I was shot in the arm.

"We tried to pull Yousef to the house, but we couldn't and he lay there bleeding for half an hour until the ambulance came."

Other children are luckier. Twelve-year-old Ahmed Hussein looked out of his window in Tel al-Sultan on Tuesday afternoon. A sniper's bullet hit him in the shoulder. The bullet passed through a fleshy part and hit his aunt in the hand.

"I thought the Israelis had withdrawn. I went to the window to see. I wanted to get out of the house and they shot me," he says in his hospital bed.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1220635,00.html