MIDDLE EAST: Five Palestinians, including a four-year-old boy, were killed by Israeli troops in three separate incidents yesterday. The army said two armed men were planning to target an agricultural community inside Israel.
Ahead of a visit by the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, to Washington later this week, the US also began to step up pressure on Israel to ease restrictions on Palestinians because of the worsening humanitarian situation in the Occupied Territories.
The army said soldiers shot dead two heavily-armed Palestinians after they crossed into the desert in southern Israel from Egypt, with the intention of infiltrating an agricultural settlement.
Israeli military officials said they had most likely tried to infiltrate via the Egyptian border because of the difficulty in breaching the security fence Israel maintains around Gaza.
Earlier yesterday, two Palestinians, including the four-year-old boy, were killed when Israeli troops surged into the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza in what the army said was a raid aimed at destroying tunnels used for smuggling weapons into the strip from Egypt.
Palestinians said a woman, aged 56, was shot dead by troops near the West Bank town of Jenin after the car in which she was travelling had taken a side road in an effort to circumvent an army road-block.
The army says road-blocks are a vital element in curbing terror attacks, but they have severely limited Palestinian travel in the territories and increased the humanitarian crisis there.
The US ambassador, Mr Daniel Kurtzer, sent a strongly-worded letter to Mr Sharon, saying Israel had failed to ease restrictions on the Palestinians.
The ambassador's message, delivered only days before Mr Sharon's scheduled meeting with President Bush, also mentioned the large number of civilians killed recently in Israeli military actions and called for greater caution in army operations.