MIDDLE EAST: Israeli troops shot dead eight Palestinians during hours of fighting in Gaza's Rafah refugee camp yesterday, in the heaviest violence in the Gaza Strip for two months.
The army raid was directed at exposing and destroying tunnels running from the camp under the nearby border with Egypt, through which the Palestinians smuggle arms, the army said, adding that one such tunnel had been found.
Palestinian medics said that two of the eight people killed were civilians, one of them a 50-year-old man, and that a third was a policeman hit en route to work, while the other five were armed gunmen, one of whom was brought dead to hospital holding an explosive device.
The Israeli army said that all of those killed were armed.
Troops moved into the camp before dawn, and were met with Palestinian gunfire. The exchanges were still continuing later in the day, as the first funerals were taking place.
Mourners vowed to avenge the dead, shouting "Blood for blood and killing for killing." At least two of those killed were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. The same group had earlier claimed responsibility for the killings of two Israeli soldiers, also in Gaza, on Monday night - the first two Israeli fatalities in more than a month.
Israeli officials denied that they had ordered the Rafah raid in response to Monday's killings of the soldiers. The operation, rather, officials said, was part of "an ongoing effort" to thwart the arms smuggling. And they urged the Palestinian Authority to take measures of its own to prevent the flow of arms to extremist groups.
PA officials condemned the raid. Mr Nabil Sha'ath, the PA Foreign Minister called it "blatant aggression" that made a mockery of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's talk of peace.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, Israel announced that it had arrested more than 20 Hamas activists, based in Ramallah, who it said were responsible for the deaths of more than 10 Israelis in attacks over the past two years. The group had been about to attempt a gruesome capture and killing of soldiers, officials said, having planned to deliberately crash a lorry into an army vehicle, snatch the soldiers, cut off their heads, and use them as bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners. Officials said that Ibrahim Hamed, the leader of the gang, which they claimed was directly orchestrated by Hamas officials in Damascus, was still on the run.
Responding to recent threats from Israel to destroy the Iranian nuclear programme, the head of the Iranian air force, Gen Sayed Reza Pardis, warned that, if it attempts such attacks, Israel would be "digging its own grave."