6 Palestinians Die in Daylong Raid in Gaza

In a powerful onslaught that was unusual for continuing for a full day, Israeli tanks and troops stormed a Palestinian community in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday that has been used as a launch site for rocket attacks on Israel. At least six Palestinians were killed and nearly 30 were reported hurt as young stone-throwers and masked gunmen mounted fierce resistance.

Elsewhere in Gaza, a crowded sliver of Mediterranean coast that has been the scene of intense fighting in the last week, a Palestinian sniper killed an Israeli soldier near the southern town of Khan Yunis. A Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli tank fire not far from the spot soon afterward, and a gunman who opened fire on Israeli troops was shot to death near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops also fatally shot a Palestinian man they said was trying to infiltrate Israel near the town of Tulkarm. The army said the man disobeyed shouted orders to stop for an inspection of his documents; Palestinians said he was a laborer trying to get to his job who either did not hear the command or simply panicked.

The violence came as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continued efforts to form a coalition government. On Sunday, he was handed what could prove to be a definitive rebuff by the left-leaning Labor Party, which he has been trying to lure into an alliance with his hard-line Likud.

In the meantime, Sharon has forged alliances with the centrist Shinui party, an advocate for secular Jews that nearly tripled its strength in Jan. 28 elections, and the National Religious Party, a strong proponent of maintaining Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Such a coalition would give Sharon a narrow, 61-seat majority in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.

Labor was in coalition with Sharon in the previous government but quit, precipitating the elections. The participation of Labor in his new government -- or even the presence of some leading Labor figure such as Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres -- would help boost Sharon’s international standing during the run-up to a prospective U.S.-led war in Iraq, and perhaps help alleviate tremendous Palestinian mistrust of the Israeli leader.

Sharon has about three weeks to determine the final makeup of his coalition.

In Gaza -- which is the heartland of the militant group Hamas, and which Sharon’s government has hinted could be the scene of a full-scale Israeli takeover -- violence has continued unabated for eight days.

Backed by rumbling tanks, with assault helicopters thudding overhead, Israeli troops drove into the northern town of Beit Hanoun before dawn Sunday, seeking to neutralize the ability of Palestinian militants to launch missiles toward the Israeli town of Sderot, in the Negev desert.

Several volleys of the crude, short-range Kassam rockets have been launched at Sderot in recent days, resulting in one injury but no serious damage or deaths. In a defiant gesture by Hamas, more rockets were fired Sunday even as Israeli troops were operating in Gaza.

During the Israeli raid, troops using sniffer dogs conducted house-to-house searches, and the homes of at least five militants, most of them from Hamas, were demolished. Enormous armored bulldozers built a barrier of dirt and chunks of broken asphalt at the town’s entrance.

Masked Palestinian gunmen fired on the troops, as often happens during such strikes. Generally, though, the soldiers pull out before dawn, and Palestinian families stay inside during the fighting.

However, as Sunday’s operation wore on, some children and teens ventured into the streets, hurling stones and chunks of concrete at the troops, who fired back. Palestinians said two stone-throwers, one a teen, were among the dead, together with a cowherd in his 20s who was apparently trying to safeguard his livestock.

At a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel would exert “relentless” pressure to halt rocket fire from northern Gaza.

The current Israeli offensive in Gaza was set off not by rocket attacks but by the fiery deaths of four Israeli soldiers on Feb. 15, when Hamas managed to blow up a tank on patrol outside a Jewish settlement.

Psychologically, the Hamas rocket campaign against Negev towns is reminiscent of Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon on the northern Israeli border town of Kiryat Shemona during the 1990s using Katyusha rockets.

Those attacks were also largely ineffectual but fueled fear and anger among border residents and served as a driving force behind the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel unilaterally withdrew from its self-declared buffer zone there in May 2000.

With a flood of media reports drawing comparisons between the two situations, Israeli authorities have given Sderot, which has been the principal target of Kassam attacks, status as a “front-line” community. That designation makes it eligible for a greater range of government aid.

Elsewhere Sunday, Israeli troops pulled back from the historic center of the West Bank city of Nablus, whose maze-like casbah had been the scene of repeated fatal clashes in the previous four days. A 14-year-old Palestinian boy died Sunday of wounds suffered a day earlier in Nablus.

Israel says the casbah is a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups. During a large-scale West Bank offensive last April, Israeli troops took over the old quarter after heavy fighting, but the troops eventually pulled back.

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Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Beit Hanoun contributed to this report.