Israeli Firefight With Gunmen in Gaza Kills Six

A fierce exchange of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen Thursday turned a Gaza Strip shantytown into a battleground where at least six Palestinians, including two women and two children, were killed and an estimated 50 others wounded, according to Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses.

The deaths come amid criticism by the Bush administration and Israeli human rights activists over a recent upsurge in civilian deaths during Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel expressed regret over the latest loss of life but said Palestinian gunmen often use crowded residential neighborhoods as cover when attacking Israeli troops.

The firefight in the town of Rafah, hard by the Egyptian border at Gaza’s southern tip, began when Palestinian gunmen fired on Israeli armored bulldozers that were carrying out fortification work Thursday afternoon on a road along the frontier, said Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, a spokesman for the Israeli military.

Palestinian residents of the Rafah refugee camp described huddling together as machine-gun fire and tank shells slammed into a crowded warren of cinderblock homes threaded by narrow alleyways, known as Block O.

“Kids were crying -- I was trying to hold a 6-year-old kid who was hurt, and a tank fired right toward us,” said Hussein Abed Al, a 21-year-old Palestinian who was bloodied by shrapnel wounds to his hand and leg.

Dr. Ali Moussa, head of Rafah hospital, said that six people were confirmed dead and that, based on statements from arriving wounded, at least two more bodies were believed to be lying in the rubble. During the fighting, which lasted more than an hour, heavy machine-gun fire struck a boys school operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, forcing teachers and pupils to seek shelter in the basement, the agency said.

Gaza, long a flashpoint for violence and known to be a stronghold of militant groups, has suffered a disproportionate share of civilian deaths in recent weeks.

Israel says a string of recent army operations in Gaza is aimed at uprooting the infrastructure and targeting the leadership of militant groups, such as Hamas, that have carried out bombings and attacks on Israelis.

However, Gaza is an extremely crowded area, and it is difficult for ordinary Palestinians to stay out of harm’s way.

On Sunday, a Palestinian toddler in Rafah was killed by falling debris during an Israeli raid aimed at destroying infiltration tunnels used by Palestinians to smuggle weaponry from Egypt. On Oct. 7, 17 Palestinians were killed and scores wounded in an army raid in the southern Gazan town of Khan Yunis, during which a missile was fired into a crowded residential area.

Those deaths drew criticism from the Bush administration. Before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit this week to Washington, the U.S. had called on him to try to stem civilian casualties during military operations.

In the outside world, and the Arab world in particular, anger over Palestinian casualties complicates efforts by the United States to lay the groundwork for a war in Iraq.

Israel, however, insists that Palestinian combatants bear much of the blame for the carnage.

“Our goal, of course, is not to kill civilians,” said Rafowicz, the military spokesman. “Rafah is a war zone, because the Palestinians have decided to use it as a war zone. They are firing at us from residential areas.... They are endangering their own people, and they know it.”

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, speaking on Israeli television, expressed regret over any civilian deaths and said the circumstances would be investigated. But he, like other senior Israeli officials, gave no indication that Israel would be deterred from bringing heavy pressure to bear on militant groups.

Military commanders “make every effort so as to avoid civilian casualties. I am aware of the damage, the cumulative damage,” Ben-Eliezer said. “We do not believe there is anything heroic about killing children.”

In Rafah, angry crowds gathered outside the main hospital, chanting calls for revenge and firing weapons into the air. Burials for most of the dead were expected to be held today, which is the main prayer day of the Muslim week, and funeral processions are typically occasions for outbursts of wild fury.

In volatile Gaza, Israel considers Rafah an area of particular difficulty and danger. Officials say Palestinian militant groups use a network of tunnels beneath the Gazan-Egyptian border to bring in weapons. Some of these tunnels, they add, dead-end among a tangle of buildings and passageways in the refugee camp.

Ben-Eliezer said the armored bulldozers that were fired upon, setting off the fighting, had apparently come across another tunnel.

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Special correspondent Tamer Misshal in Gaza City contributed to this report.