Gaza Fighting Kills as Many as 9 Palestinians

Fierce fighting broke out early today in the northern Gaza Strip between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen, and reports said up to nine Palestinians were killed.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said he could confirm four deaths in “massive” exchanges of fire that began before dawn. One Israeli soldier was seriously wounded, he said.

The higher number of Palestinian deaths was reported on Israel’s army radio, which is generally reliable in reporting combat casualties.

Palestinian witnesses said heavy explosions and gunfire echoed for hours through the village of Beit Hanoun, where the army had been searching the last 10 days for Palestinian militants who fire homemade rockets toward Israeli towns and Jewish settlements.

In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers moved before dawn today into the Khan Yunis refugee camp and demolished several unoccupied buildings, according to the army and Palestinian witnesses. Last month, Palestinian militants dug a tunnel from Khan Yunis to an Israeli army outpost, which it blew up, killing one soldier.

Israeli military activity in northern Gaza increased sharply near the end of June, after crude rockets fired from the territory caused deaths inside Israel for the first time in 45 months of fighting. A strike in the town of Sderot, just outside the Gaza Strip, killed two Israelis, including a 3-year-old boy. Today’s fighting in Gaza erupted as a visit by the chief of the United Nations’ atomic oversight agency was casting a spotlight on Israel’s nuclear program. Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, but has never acknowledged having them.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been holding talks with Israeli officials, during which he said Israelis focused not on their own activities but on concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Israel for decades has hewed to a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” neither denying nor acknowledging that it has nuclear arms. Before ElBaradei began his three-day visit Tuesday, Israeli officials had made it clear that no change in Israel’s stance was in the works.

To spell out that point, Israel’s military-run radio station this week rebroadcast remarks made two months ago by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in which he declared that the country’s no-tell nuclear policy “has proven itself and will continue.” Israel has never shied away, however, from hinting broadly to hostile neighbors that it possesses such weaponry. It counts on this suspected atomic arsenal to serve as a deterrent.

“Israel has to hold in its hand all the elements of power necessary to protect itself - by itself,” Sharon said in the remarks.

ElBaradei said before his arrival here for his first visit in six years that he wanted the Middle East to be free of nuclear weapons. Israel is thought to be the only state possessing such armaments in the region, but suspect nuclear activities in Iran are being scrutinized by ElBaradei’s Vienna-based agency.

Israeli intelligence has conducted intense investigations regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities and is eager to bring the matter to world attention. Reflecting that, the Israeli officials with whom ElBaradei met included a former chief of the Mossad spy agency.

“They were expressing concern about Iran,” ElBaradei told reporters in Tel Aviv after talks with officials who also included the health minister and the head of Israel’s secretive nuclear agency. The director-general was to meet today with Sharon.

ElBaradei is not being granted access to the main Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona, in the Negev desert. The most detailed picture to date of weapons research there emerged in 1986, in the form of photographs and technical data provided by Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear worker turned whistle-blower.

Vanunu, who was freed in April after spending nearly two decades in an Israeli prison, made a public appeal via Israeli television that ElBaradei be allowed to visit the nuclear site.

Despite receiving no signals from Israel that it would soften its stance, ElBaradei continued to make his point.

“In the long run you need to build a system where nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction will not be part of your security structure,” he told reporters.

The United States refrains from publicly pressuring Israel to make nuclear disclosures. On the day of ElBaradei’s arrival in Israel, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, asked about Israel’s nuclear secrecy by reporters in Washington, declined to address the issue.

Because Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it cannot be forced to declare itself a nuclear power and accept internationally mandated curbs on its atomic activities.