Palestinian Girl Shot in Gaza

An 11-year-old Palestinian girl was fatally shot near her home in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, two days after another 11-year-old girl was killed in the same area, a border zone where civilians have increasingly been caught up in chaotic fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.

The child’s death came as Israeli soldiers, backed by tanks and armor, enforced a stringent new blockade in the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip that prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from venturing more than a few miles from their homes.

Despite the heightened security, at least one Palestinian gunman managed to make his way late Saturday into a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza and lob grenades at the Israeli troops guarding it before being shot and killed.

One soldier was injured, the army said. Troops using helicopters and searchlights hunted late into the night for any accomplices in the infiltration of the settlement, Morag.

The settlement lies close to the town of Rafah, where the 11-year-old Palestinian girl was shot hours earlier.

Relatives and hospital officials said Hanina abu Seiteh was shot in the thigh as she walked home from school with her 12-year-old sister.

Their neighborhood has been the scene of fierce exchanges of fire almost every day between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.

The bullet that struck Hanina apparently nicked an artery, and she died a short time later in the Rafah hospital, doctors said.

The Israeli army said it did not know anything about the death but reported that around that time, a group of Palestinians had tossed grenades at Israeli soldiers and the troops had responded with gunfire.

Like much of Gaza, Rafah and its adjoining refugee camp are densely populated.

The area where most of the recent armed confrontations have occurred is packed with flimsily built shanties that offer those living there almost no protection against stray shots from automatic weapons or heavy machine guns.

Hanina’s death was the third in four days of a child in Gaza younger than 16. Another 11-year-old schoolgirl was killed Thursday as she leaned out of the window of her family home to watch the funeral procession of a 15-year-old boy who had been shot on the street Wednesday.

Each side blames the other for the escalating civilian casualty count.

The Palestinians say the Israeli military operates with reckless disregard for the safety of Palestinian civilians; the Israelis accuse the gunmen of deliberately using crowded neighborhoods as cover for staging attacks and for smuggling weapons via a network of tunnels that run beneath the border with Egypt.

The Gaza blockade imposed Saturday was in response to a surge in the number of shooting attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers -- in particular, the ambush-style killing Friday of the rabbi of a Jewish settlement in central Gaza, the army said.

The 40-year-old rabbi, Yitzhak Aramai, was shot at the wheel of his car, in which his wife and six children were also riding. None of the other family members was hurt.

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the shooting. Early Saturday, the army arrested two Islamic Jihad members in Gaza and blew up their houses, but it did not say whether they were believed linked to the attack on the rabbi.

The new Israeli checkpoints, through which only ambulances were being allowed to pass, blocked Gaza’s main north-south roads, dividing the strip into three small sectors and trapping many people who had left their homes to work or visit relatives.

The army said this blockade is the most restrictive in five months. Its lifting will depend on the security situation, a military spokeswoman said.

In the West Bank city of Jenin, a German diplomat escaped injury when a Palestinian gunman fired shots at his armored car, the army and Palestinian officials said. The diplomat was not identified.