Israeli troops kill 9 Palestinians

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli troops killed nine Palestinians in
clashes in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank on Wednesday,
including four gunmen and two civilians as tanks pushed into a
central Gaza refugee camp.

The Gaza raid was part of a three-week old offensive to
recover a captured soldier and halt rocket fire.

Heavy shooting broke out around the Maghazi Camp as Israeli
troops crossed the border into the territory before dawn.

Three militants from the governing Hamas group were killed,
along with one gunman from Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas’s Fatah faction, medics and Palestinian security sources
said.

The two civilians killed included a 16-year-old.

Fifty-two Palestinians were wounded in the clashes,
including four hurt by a missile fired from an Israeli drone
aircraft. At least 10 of those hurt were children. Some of the
wounded were in a critical condition, medics said.

Gunmen said they anticipated Israeli forces would enter
their camp after an Israeli tank shell cut electricity off to
the camp.

Because of the continued fighting, the United States
stepped up the evacuation of Americans in Gaza. Officials said
68 American nationals were pulled out of the strip on July 8
and another 104 on Wednesday.

In the West Bank, troops backed by armored vehicles
surrounded a Palestinian security compound in the city of
Nablus and killed three gunmen of Abbas’s Fatah faction, medics
said. Troops arrested around 100 Palestinian security men.

Israeli army spokesmen confirmed their involvement in the
fighting and said five Israeli soldiers were wounded in Gaza.

The army gave few details of the goal of its latest push
into Gaza. Maghazi is a district of rundown cement block
buildings in the densely populated strip of 1.4 million.

Gaza has been under siege since gunmen captured an Israeli
soldier in a raid over the border on June 25.

Around 100 Palestinians, over half of them militants, have
been killed in the offensive. Israeli planes have also
bombarded buildings of the Palestinian government, led by
Islamist group Hamas, and knocked out bridges, roads and a
power plant.

Israel holds Hamas responsible for the capture of Gilad
Shalit, 19, by three militant groups, including Hamas’s armed
wing. Israel has rejected their demand to swap more than 1,000
Palestinian prisoners for the tank gunner.

At the same time, Israel is fighting Hizbollah guerrillas
in Lebanon after they abducted two soldiers in a cross-border
raid last week and killed eight others in ensuing clashes.

Israel has said it will continue fighting on both fronts
until it gets its soldiers back and removes the threat on its
borders.

Both Hizbollah and Palestinian militants have continued to
fire rockets into Israel, though the Lebanese guerrillas have
far more powerful and longer-range rockets than the homemade
missiles used by the militants in Gaza.

Israel pulled troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza
Strip last summer after 38 years of occupation.