Israeli forces raid Gaza neighbourhood

1.00pm

GAZA - Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships raided Gaza City on Tuesday, killing a militant and wounding at least seven other Palestinians in heavy fighting, witnesses said.

"A force has entered the (Zeitoun neighbourhood) and we are carrying out a pinpoint operation against the terrorist infrastructure," an Israeli military source said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is preparing an amended Gaza pullout plan after his original proposal was voted down by his right-wing Likud party on May 2, has vowed to continue to strike against militant groups.

Witnesses said gunmen rushed to the scene of the night-time incursion and that fierce battles erupted in which a 21-year-old Hamas militant and seven other Palestinians, at least four of them armed, were wounded.

The operation began when Israeli undercover forces sped into Zeitoun in civilian taxis and jeeps, the witnesses said.

They were later joined by tanks and armoured personnel carriers as helicopters fired their machine guns and loud explosions echoed across Gaza City.

Israeli media reports said the force was searching for workshops where Qassam rockets used by militants against Jewish settlements in Gaza and towns in southern Israel were being made.

Troops surrounded homes belonging to militants from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups and blew off the doors to the entrances of several buildings, where they set up rooftop observation posts, witnesses said.

Earlier in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority said it planned to hold its first municipal elections, in an apparent concession to legislators who have long been pressing for an end to corruption in city halls.

Palestinian officials said the balloting would begin in the usually peaceful city of Jericho in August and be completed in the 127 other municipal districts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within a year.

However, Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said a general election, last held in 1996 and part of reforms sought by the international community, would have to await an Israeli troop pullout from areas seized after an uprising began in 2000.

Mayoral elections were last held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1980s under the auspices of Israeli occupation authorities. Both areas came under limited Palestinian self-rule after interim peace agreements in the early 1990s.

- REUTERS