Palestinian Girl Is 3rd Gaza Youngster Killed in 3 Days

An 11-year-old Palestinian girl was fatally shot as she opened her bedroom window Thursday, her family said. She is the third youngster to be killed in as many days in the Gaza Strip.

Relatives of the girl, Nada Mahdi, said she had just returned from school to her home in the Rafah refugee camp and opened the window to watch the funeral procession of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy who was killed by gunfire the previous day.

A stray bullet struck her in the chest, and she died half an hour later at Rafah hospital, according to hospital officials.

It was not immediately clear whether the fatal shot was fired by Palestinian gunmen or Israeli soldiers. Her family said the bullet came from the direction of an Israeli army observation post about a quarter-mile away.

The army said it had exchanged fire about that time with Palestinian gunmen hiding in an abandoned building, according to spokeswoman Capt. Sharon Feingold, who said she had no information about the girl’s death.

Rafah, which lies close to the Egyptian border at the southern tip of Gaza, has been the scene of daily gun battles between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel says the border zone is a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups who use a network of underground tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

The area close to the frontier, in particular the Rafah refugee camp, is very densely populated, and Palestinian civilians often find themselves caught up in the fighting.

The slain girl’s family lives on a street that is laid out like most others in the camp -- a tight-packed jumble of cement-block houses sharing common walls and courtyards, with only an occasional narrow alleyway running between them. Her family said gunfire echoes through their neighborhood at all hours of the day and night.

Feingold, the Israeli army spokeswoman, blamed Palestinian gunmen for using the refugee camp and its environs as a staging ground for attacks. She said that in the 48 hours before the girl’s death, there had been 16 separate shooting incidents in the area.

“It’s a constant battle zone,” she said.

The two sides gave conflicting versions of the deaths of two teenage boys in the two preceding days.

Fifteen-year-old Alaa Sdoodi was shot and killed on a street in Rafah on Wednesday. The army said its troops were under attack and that a soldier was wounded in the exchange.

On Tuesday night, in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in central Gaza, 16-year-old Jawad Zidan was fatally shot. His family said he was sleeping inside his home at the time; the army described him as a gunman.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, Israeli troops moved in before dawn to evict Jewish settlers who had set up an illegal outpost at the spot where 12 Israeli soldiers and settlement security men were killed last month in a Palestinian ambush. Three of the Palestinian attackers were killed.

With rain pouring down, scuffles broke out in ankle-deep mud as soldiers removed the shipping containers the settlers had set up at the foot of a slope. Settlers, some chanting prayers, clung to the containers’ metal handles as they were dragged away.

Seven settlers were arrested and several soldiers suffered minor injuries, the army said.

The settlers vowed to re-erect the outpost, which they had named “Heroes of Hebron” after the dead of last month’s ambush on a pathway leading from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, just outside town, to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine sacred to both Jews and Muslims.

Hebron, where about 500 Jewish settlers live among 130,000 Palestinians, is a frequent flashpoint for violence. Two Israeli soldiers, one of them female, were killed by Palestinian gunmen last week near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, revered as the burial place of the biblical Abraham.

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has promised to widen the roadway leading from Kiryat Arba to the tomb, and the army wants to demolish 15 Palestinian homes along the route to do so. However, Israel’s Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the demolitions.