Israeli
Helicopter Attack Kills Two UN Workers By Justin Huggler in
Jerusalem 12-6-2
- Ten Palestinians were killed yesterday in an Israeli
raid on a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Civilians were among the dead,
although Palestinian sources said they believed the majority of victims
were armed militants.
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- The Israeli incursion appeared to have set off a
three-hour gun battle in the alleys of the Bureij refugee camp, a
densely populated civilian area.
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- The Israeli army denied there were any civilian
casualties. However, among the dead was one woman: Ahlam Kandil, a
Palestinian teacher who worked in a United Nations school, who died of
her injuries in hospital. Ms Kandil was a civilian, according to
Palestinian sources.
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- Another UN worker who was killed was also thought to
be a civilian. Osama Tahrawi worked as a school attendant in the refugee
camp.
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- The deaths of two UN staff came two weeks after Iain
Hook, a British UN worker, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier at his
office in Jenin.
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- A UN official in Gaza, Christer Nordahl, said
yesterday that as many as eight of the dead in the Bureij camp were
unarmed civilians.
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- The mayor of the refugee camp, Kamal Baghdadi, said
several members of one family had been killed when their house was hit
by a shell.
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- Palestinian sources said they believed most of the
dead were armed gunmen who had rushed to defend the camp when the
Israelis raided it. The Israeli army said a helicopter had fired a
missile into a street, killing five militants from the Hamas
organisation.
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- Around 25 Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles stormed
the camp just after midnight local time (10pm GMT), firing as they
advanced and backed by helicopter gunships.
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- The Israeli army said it was hunting a Palestinian
militant. Raids of this sort into civilian areas have become frequent in
the Gaza Strip recently.
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- The Israeli army makes brief incursions in attempts to
assassinate or capture senior militants and demolishes houses that it
says belong to militants or their families.
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- Palestinians were celebrating the feast of Eid
al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and when they heard about the incursion,
armed fighters rushed into the streets to fight the soldiers, witnesses
said.
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- Announcements went out over mosque loudspeakers
calling people onto the streets to defend the refugee camp.
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- "We came upon a lot of resistance and the forces fired
at armed gunmen," said Brigadier Yisrael Ziv, the Israeli army's local
commander.
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- "We identified 12-14 at whom we fired. At times the
battle was fought at very close range, 10 metres. They used Kalashnikov
rifles and grenades and anti-tank shells." A 20-year-old resident of the
camp, Mohammed al-Maqadama, said: "It was as if the doors of hell were
opened in our camp by the helicopters and the tanks."
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- The Israeli army said the raid had targeted Ayman
Shasniyeh, a local leader of the Popular Resistance Committee, a small
militant group particularly active in the Gaza Strip, who is believed to
be responsible for destroying an Israeli tank in March.
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- Three soldiers were killed in that attack.
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- The army failed to catch Mr Shasniyeh but demolished
his house and said it had arrested one of his brothers.
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- The soldiers demolished four buildings inside the
camp, leaving about 70 people from seven different families without
homes.
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- One of the demolished buildings appears to have
belonged to the family of a dead suicide bomber. The reasons for
demolishing the others were not clear. The Israeli authorities claim
they demolish the homes of militants as a deterrent, to prevent
attacks.
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- International human rights groups have condemned the
practice of demolition as "collective punishment", outlawed under the
Geneva Conventions, because the families are punished for their
relatives' crimes.
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- "They have made this a bloody Eid," said Mr Maqadama,
the Bureij resident. There was anger from Palestinians that the raid had
come during Eid al-Fitr, one of the two most important festivals in the
Muslim calendar.
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- Sharon Feingold, an Israeli army spokeswoman: "We go
after [militants] whenever we have intelligence. They don't respect our
holidays. They attacked on Passover."
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- Thousands of mourners gathered for the funerals of the
dead yesterday, many of them chanting "revenge, revenge". "We are
committed to the jihad until our land is liberated," Hamas members
shouted through loudspeakers.
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- The immediate fear now will be of militant attacks on
Israelis in retaliation.
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The Mulindwas
communication group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in
anarchy"
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