6 Killed as Riots Erupt Over Palestinians’ Exile : Israel: Child is among the dead as army opens fire on protesters in occupied areas’ bloodiest day in two years.

Israeli soldiers shot dead six Palestinians, including a 7-year-old girl, and wounded more than 30 others in the Gaza Strip on Saturday as they protested Israel’s deportation of more than 400 Islamic activists. It was the bloodiest day in the occupied territories in more than two years.

Violence erupted immediately after Israeli authorities lifted a 10-day curfew at 3 p.m. in the volatile town of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets, stoning soldiers and shouting support for Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic group, and the troops then opened fire, according to Western relief workers at the scene.

The clashes spread quickly to nearby refugee camps, where Palestinian youths fought with more barrages of stones and metal bars and with barricades of burning tires before the soldiers, firing volleys of tear-gas grenades, rubber bullets and live ammunition, were able to regain control two hours later. An army helicopter also dropped tear gas to disperse the protesters.

Six bodies were brought to Gaza Strip hospitals along with more than 30 wounded, five of them in critical condition, according to U.N. spokesman Rolf van Uye. Hospital officials said the dead included the 7-year-old girl, Amal Abu Tyur.

Military sources in Tel Aviv, confirming the deaths, said that two Israeli soldiers were slightly wounded in the fighting. The troops had opened fire in a “life-threatening situation,” the Israeli sources said.

The death toll was thought to be the highest in an incident since Israeli police opened fire on Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City to quell rioting in October, 1990, and killed 17 Palestinians.

Tire burning and stone throwing also were reported in Gaza City and the nearby Shati refugee camp. In one neighborhood of Gaza City, more than 400 Palestinians marched with Palestinian flags and shouted for Israel to allow the return of the deportees, many of them from the area.

Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories had declared 10 days of “fire and rage” to protest the deportations, and more clashes are likely, particularly in the Gaza Strip.

Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, the Israeli army’s chief of staff, warned earlier Saturday of increased violence following the deportation of the 415 suspected Islamic activists, of whom about 160 came from the Gaza Strip.

“I’m sure in the short run maybe today or tomorrow the level of attacks may rise,” Barak said in an interview on state-run Israel Radio, “but in the longer run, maybe over weeks, (the expulsions) will make a real contribution to ending this.”

Anticipating protests against the deportations, Israel had increased security measures and deployed more troops in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which remain sealed off with travel into Israel prohibited.

On the West Bank, Israeli troops fired into the air and used tear gas to disperse Palestinian demonstrators on Saturday in Ramallah, 10 miles from Jerusalem, and the nearby Jalazoun refugee camp. Fifteen were arrested, according to Arab reports.

Saturday’s six deaths raised the toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers or civilians during the five-year intifada, or uprising, to 1,003, according to figures compiled by the Associated Press. An additional 679 Palestinians have been killed by fellow Arabs, most on suspicion of collaboration with Israel. At least 112 Israelis have died in the violence.

Israeli officials on Saturday rejected with bitterness the unanimous resolution of the U.N. Security Council condemning the expulsions as a violation of basic human rights and the Geneva Conventions covering armed conflicts. The council demanded that the deportees be allowed to return immediately.

“Anyone who supports the need to reach peace in the Middle East should have accepted and understood the decision of the Israeli government,” said Gad Ben-Ari, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s spokesman.

Asserting that the expulsions would protect the 14-month-old Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, Ben-Ari said, “The agenda of these groups is not only to kill Israeli citizens but also to kill the peace process in the Middle East.”

Israel contends that the men deported on Thursday were suspected of membership in the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, or in Islamic Jihad, both of which have carried out a number of armed attacks on Israeli security forces and civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent months.

Last Sunday, Hamas abducted a sergeant major from the paramilitary border police on his way to work and later killed him when the government failed to respond immediately to its demand that its leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin of Gaza, be freed from prison where he is serving a life term after conviction for inciting murderous violence. The policeman was the sixth Israeli trooper to die in 10 days.

Two Israeli civil rights lawyers have filed petitions with the Supreme Court in an effort to force Israel to bring the deportees back from southern Lebanon, where they are trapped in a no-man’s-land between Israeli and Lebanese forces. The court is scheduled to hear the appeal today.

The expulsion orders said that the deportees would have to stay outside Israel and the occupied territories for a maximum of two years but allowed them to appeal through relatives or lawyers to Israeli military authorities and courts.

Palestinian political leaders continued Saturday to point out that none of those deported were charged with a specific crime.