Three civilians killed as Israel widens Gaza sweep

Israeli forces widened their 4-day-old offensive in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing five Palestinian fighters and three civilians, including a 13-year-old girl hit by a sniper bullet fired into her home.

Moving five miles south of their initial targets in the town of Beit Hanoun, Israeli troops and tanks fought gunmen for four hours near Jabaliya. Four men from the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamic movement that leads the Palestinian Authority, were killed in the battle, Palestinian officials said.

Louay Borno, identified by Hamas as one of its leading rocket makers, died in an airstrike aimed at his minivan near Gaza City.

At least 32 Palestinian combatants, 11 Palestinian civilians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since the Israeli army crossed into Gaza on Wednesday and seized Beit Hanoun. Israeli officials say they are trying to root out stockpiles of Kassam rockets and the men who fire them almost daily into southern Israel, largely from Beit Hanoun.

The operation has widened across northern Gaza as Palestinian rocket-launching teams and other fighters flee the besieged town and continue to fire rockets. On Friday, as many as 73 fighters holed up in a mosque in Beit Hanoun managed to escape an Israeli encirclement with the help of about 200 women who swarmed past troops and tanks to serve as human shields.

On Saturday, an Israeli tank in the town destroyed the home of a senior militant who had left. The shelling knocked down a wall of a neighboring house, killing 48-year-old Marwan abu Harbid, relatives said.

Palestinian medical workers said a sniper bullet fired into another home in Beit Hanoun after dark struck Walla Nasir, 13, in the head.

The Israeli military expressed regret, saying the sniper was aiming at a Palestinian fighter and killed the girl by mistake. Yousri Masri, the Palestinian ambulance driver who reached the house, said the girl’s family denied that any fighter had been in the house.

A 24-year-old noncombatant wounded Friday in an airstrike in nearby Beit Lahiya died Saturday, Palestinian hospital workers said.

Israel has come under international criticism for the operation, which has subjected homes to searches or demolition, forced most of Beit Hanoun’s 37,000 people to stay indoors, and obliged nearly every unarmed male resident to undergo interrogation. Most of the detainees have been released.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan voiced concern at the violence and death toll and urged Israel “to exercise maximum restraint, do their utmost to protect civilians and to refrain from further escalating an already grave situation.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas appealed for U.N. Security Council intervention to restrain Israel.

The operation is Israel’s first takeover of a town in Gaza since the unilateral withdrawal of its troops and settlers from the coastal territory in September 2005. Israeli forces have been making limited incursions into Gaza since Palestinian militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in late June. The soldier, whose fate is unknown, was taken into Gaza.

Responding to the criticism, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Saturday that the Palestinians had created their own mess.

“We cleared the settlements. The army left. The terrorists are just hurting themselves, hurting Gaza and the Palestinians,” he said on Israel Radio.

A curfew imposed on Beit Hanoun was lifted for three hours Saturday to allow residents to stock up on food. John Ging, a U.N. Relief and Works Agency official, said Israel had allowed an aid convoy to reach the town.

“The situation is very bad for the residents -- there is no electricity and the water rationing already in effect is not functioning,” Ging told reporters in Gaza City.

Despite the Israeli pressure, militants continued launching Kassam rockets from elsewhere in Gaza last week, causing scattered property damage and several injuries in Israel.

One group in Gaza, the Popular Resistance Committees, warned that Israel would face a wave of suicide bombings if the offensive was not halted by Monday.

boudreaux@latimes.com

Times staff writer Boudreaux reported from Jerusalem and special correspondent Abu Alouf from Gaza City.