Israeli Forces Surround Three Communities in Gaza Strip

Israeli forces on Sunday consolidated their hold on a swath of the northern Gaza Strip, as at least six Palestinians died during fighting around the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp and two nearby villages reportedly used by militants for launching rockets.

More than 2,000 Israeli soldiers, backed by dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, ringed the three communities as the incursion -- one of Israel’s biggest in the Gaza Strip in four years of conflict -- continued for a fifth day.

A Palestinian fighter was killed in the village of Beit Hanoun when an Israeli helicopter fired on a group of militants who launched a Kassam rocket into Israel from a donkey cart, Israeli officials and witnesses said. The cart was loaded with rockets at the time it was blown up, an Israeli military spokesman said.

Israeli and Palestinian officials said two Palestinians were killed in an early-morning Israeli airstrike in Jabaliya and that three others died in separate incidents. Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli forces fatally shot a 36-year-old deaf and mute Palestinian man as he looked out the window of his home. Israeli military sources said soldiers shot at a “suspicious figure” who appeared to have been monitoring their movements.

No Israeli casualties were reported in Sunday’s fighting.

Early today, four more Palestinians were killed in two separate Gaza incidents. Three died when a group came under Israeli fire near the village of Beit Lahiya, and a man died in Jabaliya.

The latest fatalities brought to about 60 the number of Palestinians -- including civilians -- killed in hostilities since Wednesday. Israel launched the raid to stop Palestinian militants from launching crude Kassam rockets over the border into Israel.

The projectiles have been notoriously inaccurate, but rocket attacks have killed four civilians in the southern Israeli city of Sderot since June, including two children, ages 2 and 4, Wednesday afternoon.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered his generals to find ways to stop such attacks, including a sweeping military offensive to push the weapons out of range of Israeli homes.

Sharon and other leaders describe the operation as open-ended, vowing to halt the rocket assaults before the prime minister implements his plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip by the end of 2005. That plan calls for the removal of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank.

“We need to operate in the Gaza Strip in a way that will prevent communities from being shelled both at present and during the evacuation,” the prime minister said in an interview published Sunday in the daily Maariv newspaper.

It is rare for Israeli forces to carry out wide-scale raids inside the Jabaliya refugee camp, a community of 100,000 that is a stronghold for Palestinian militant groups. It was not clear how many of the dead were civilians.

Israel says most were militants. Palestinian militant groups have claimed half or fewer were fighters.

Palestinian political leaders and medical officials in Gaza say many of the dead and injured suffered shrapnel-type wounds that suggested Israeli tanks were firing antipersonnel shells. Maj. Sharon Feingold, an Israeli army spokeswoman, said the military does not discuss the type of munitions it uses. Israeli officials accused Palestinian fighters of taking cover behind civilians.

Israeli armored vehicles have demolished dozens of houses, flattened trees and plowed crop fields, Palestinians say. Israeli officials said many of the sites were being used by gunmen to hide in and launch attacks, and that other buildings were damaged as tanks and bulldozers moved along the camp’s narrow lanes.

Independent verification is difficult because journalists have been prevented from entering Gaza by Israel’s closure of the Erez border crossing.

Palestinian residents said thousands of people were without electricity and water for days, and many remained indoors because of the fighting.

“We cannot get out of the house because the tanks are just [50 feet] from where we are, and if anyone in the neighborhood tries to get out, he will be shot at,” Mohammed Kahlout said by telephone from the eastern section of Jabaliya.

Meanwhile, Israel and a United Nations relief agency in the Gaza Strip bickered over the government’s allegations that U.N. ambulances were being used by Palestinian fighters to transport weapons, including Kassam rockets.

Israel is distributing video footage that it says shows men loading a Kassam rocket into an ambulance bearing U.N. markings. Officials say the clip, shot from some distance overhead, is proof the U.N. Relief and Work Agency, which provides food and other aid to Palestinians in Gaza, is helping militants.

Israeli officials reportedly planned to seek the removal of the agency’s commissioner- general, Peter Hansen.

Hansen denied the charge, saying the object carried by the figure in the video did not appear heavy enough to be a Kassam rocket, and was likely a stretcher. Hansen said that UNRWA had interviewed its ambulance drivers and was confident that they were acting properly.

Hansen has criticized the army over damage to U.N. schools in Jabaliya.

Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.