At least 13 killed in IDF missile strike on Rafah protest

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and Agencies

At least 13 Palestinians, including two children, were killed Wednesday afternoon when Israel Defense Forces helicopter gunships and tanks fired missiles and shells into a crowd in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, bringing the day’s death toll in the area to at least 18.

At least sixty people, including many women and children, were wounded in the incident, witnesses said.

The witnesses said the four projectiles hit a protest march heading toward a neighborhood of the camp besieged by the IDF. They said four missiles were fired from the air into the crowd.

"We cannot handle the situation, no hospital in the world can handle the situation," Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, the chief hospital spokesman, said. "I got instruction from President Arafat to mobilize all our teams to Rafah immediately and declare a state of emergency all over Gaza Strip hospitals."

Hassanain said that the hospital had received numerous body parts and could not yet give an exact death toll.

Shabtai Gold, a spokesman for Physicians for Human Rights, said the army was preventing ambulances from traveling from nearby Khan Yunis to Rafah.

An estimated 3,000 people were participating in the demonstration against the IDF invasion of the nearby Tel Sultan neighborhood of the camp.

The IDF did not immediately comment.

The morgue in Rafah overflowed and bodies of Palestinians killed during previous IDF raids were stowed in a flower freezer Wednesday after being hastily removed to make space for more casualties.

Five killed in earlier strike
Earlier in the day, at least five Palestinians were killed in an incident that the IDF said began when militants opened fire on them as they operated in the southern Gaza town.

Palestinian sources said that there were several other casualties from gun fights in the area, but that rescue services were having difficulties reaching them due to the gun fire and lack of ambulances.

The IDF also ordered all males 16 or older in the Rafah neighborhood of Tel Sultan to gather in a local school.

Armed men in the area were instructed to turn themselves in while holding a white flag.

Israel Radio reported that the army had demolished five houses in Rafah Wednesday.

IDF troops were conducting house-to-house searches for armed Palestinian militants in the Tel Sultan neighborhood on Wednesday.

The army said that it expected to meet with harsh opposition from the militants in the area as Operation Rainbow entered its second day.

At least 20 Palestinians, including 14 armed men, were killed Tuesday in the operation, which the army said was intended to find weapons and arrest the smugglers and tunneling experts who build the conduits for weapons that make their way from the Egyptian side of the border to the Gaza Strip.

Three children, including a 13-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister, were reportedly among the dead. According to witnesses, the brother and sister were killed while trying to bring in laundry from the roof of their building.

An initial army probe into the incident, however, has found that the teens were probably killed by an explosive device meant to kill Israeli troops, and not from Israeli fire, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.

At least six of the dead were civilians, and some 40 people were reported wounded moderately to seriously. Most of the dead were killed by snipers or by helicopters firing missiles at armed men.

On Wednesday morning, IDF troops destroyed the Rafah home of gunman who killed Tali Hatuel and her four daughters in Gaza earlier this month.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, IDF troops entered the Jenin refugee camp early Wednesday. An armed Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militant was killed in an exchange of fire with the soldiers. Also, another Al Aqsa militant was killed in an exchange of fire with IDF soldiers in the West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday morning.

IDF troops Tuesday killed a Tanzim operative in Jenin and wounded a second man. Earlier in the day, a Tanzim militant was killed in Nablus while preparing a bomb.

The tanks and bulldozers were backed by helicopters and moved into the southern Gaza district in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, a day after soldiers isolated the area from the rest of the Strip and massive troop reinforcements were deployed to the outskirts of the Rafah refugee camp.

While most of the residents of the areas nearest the Philadelphi corridor evacuated their homes for fear of house demolitions, the army says it is being very careful about not demolishing homes - and it surprised residents by beginning the actual house-to-house searches for wanted men and arms depots in the Tel al-Sultan quarter, located in the northwestern corner of Rafah, instead of the neighborhood near Philadelphi along the southern border. Most of the damage to buildings was the result of fighting, not demolitions, the army said.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the operation would continue for "as long as necessary." But the IDF is aware that much depends on the operation’s success from day to day - excessive casualties on the Israeli side could create domestic pressure to pull the troops out, while excessive casualties or scenes of civilian distress on the Palestinian side could prompt international pressure to withdraw the troops.

Some 45 residents of Rafah petitioned the High Court of Justice on Monday night to stop the expected demolition of additional homes in the area. But just as it rejected a similar petition on Sunday, the court also rejected a wholesale ban on house demolitions Tuesday.

When asked if the IDF would widen the Philadelphi route, a measure that would entail wholesale demolitions of houses, the commander of the IDF’s Southern Gaza Brigade said that most Rafah residents would be able to return to their homes at the conclusion of the operation.