MIDEAST: Ten Palestinians were killed, including two local United Nations workers, by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip early yesterday morning, when a fierce, close-range gunfight erupted after troops backed by tanks and helicopters surged into the densely populated El Bureij refugee camp in a hunt for militants. From Peter Hirschberg, in Jerusalem
European leaders slammed Israel for using "excessive force" and a spokesman for Mr Kofi Annan said the UN Secretary General was calling on the Israeli army to act with "greater restraint". The UN chief, said Mr Chris Eckhard, "has repeatedly urged Israel to refrain from the excessive and disproportionate use of deadly force in civilian areas". It was not immediately clear how many civilians were killed in the raid, which came as Palestinians were celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid el Fitr, which marks the end of the Ramadan fast month.
Palestinian officials said most of those killed were civilians, while Israeli military officials insisted that most of the dead were gunmen - among them five Hamas members who had been firing at soldiers. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides aid to refugees, confirmed that two of the people killed were local Palestinian staff members.
Palestinian Authority President Mr Yasser Arafat called the raid a "massacre". Talking to reporters outside his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, he harangued Israel for "daily terrorism", saying that "every day there are more arrests and every day there are more assassinations". Gunbattles erupted after Israeli forces entered the camp around 3 a.m. Men called on mosque loudspeakers for people to come out and resist the incursion, and armed militants battled the troops and tanks for close to three hours.
The target of the operation, the army said, was Mr Aiman Shasniyeh, a member of the Popular Resistance Committee, whom it accuses of involvement in a bomb attack on an Israeli tank in the Strip that killed three soldiers in March. Troops failed to capture Mr Shasniyeh, but destroyed his house.
"We fired one shell from a helicopter at four armed men," said Brigadier Yisrael Ziv, the commander of Israeli forces in Gaza. "We came upon a lot of resistance and the forces fired at armed gunmen. At times the battle was fought at very close range, 10 metres. They used Kalashnikov rifles and grenades and anti-tank shells."
A resident of the camp, Mr Hassan Safi (49), said he rushed to a building hit by shells. "I myself took out two people. The helicopter was firing with machineguns at us, making it difficult to move." Thousands poured into the streets around noon to attend the funeral processions for the dead, who were carried through the streets in open coffins daubed with the Palestinian flag.
Questioned over why the raid had been carried out on a Muslim holiday, an army spokeswoman, Capt Sharon Feingold, said the military went after militants "whenever we have intelligence". But she also added that the Palestinians "don't respect our holidays. They attacked on Passover," she said, referring to a Palestinian suicide attack at an Israeli hotel in March this year in which 29 people participating in the traditional first-night Passover meal were killed.
The two UNRWA workers killed were identified as Mr Ahlam Riziq Kandil (31), an elementary school teacher who was hit by shrapnel, and Mr Osama Hassan Tahrawi, a 31-year-old school employee.
The deaths of the two UN staffers follows the shooting on November 22nd of UN aid worker Iain Hook by an Israeli soldier during a gun battle with militants in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.