Israeli troops launch Gaza camp raid

GAZA - Israeli troops and tanks have rolled back into a Gaza Strip refugee camp and are battling Palestinian gunmen just days after mounting a devastating raid on the militant stronghold.

Hospital sources said Israeli forces wounded at least three Palestinians in the latest incursion into the Rafah camp, which the army described as a resumption of its search for secret tunnels used to smuggle weapons across the border from Egypt.

The pre-dawn raid in the southern Gaza Strip followed a three-day Israeli operation that wound down on Sunday, leaving eight Palestinians dead and more than 1,000 people homeless.

UN relief officials said 114 homes were flattened during the earlier raid, the deepest into the camp in six months. Witnesses said three more homes were destroyed yesterday after at least 40 tanks and armoured personnel carriers entered Rafah.

Gunmen exchanged fire with Israeli forces entering the camp yesterday. Palestinian sources said at least two of the three people hit by Israeli gunfire had been unarmed.

Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, an adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, accused Israel of "committing further military adventures that will be useless and will only bring further deterioration to the security of the Israeli people".

"It is impossible to make the Palestinian people kneel before the Israeli war machine," he said.

Tit-for-tat violence and Palestinian political infighting have combined to stall a US-backed "road map" charting the path to peace and creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

The Rafah operation was part of Israel's stepped-up military activity following a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed 20 Israelis in the port city of Haifa on October 4.

An Israeli field commander said the raid would continue until troops uncovered all tunnels suspected of being used as arms conduits for militants spearheading a three-year-old uprising for independence.

"If we're talking about 15 (tunnels), then we'll blow up 15 (homes). If we're talking about more, then we'll blow up more," the officer told Army Radio.

Israel last week accused Rafah militants of trying to acquire shoulder-launched missiles that could end up in the West Bank and threaten civilian aircraft. The army said it uncovered three tunnels in the earlier raid but found no weapons in them.

The latest Israeli incursion came as homeless refugees were sifting the rubble of destroyed homes and work crews were struggling to restore power after the earlier raid.

With peace efforts stalled, a group of left-wing Israeli politicians and senior Palestinian officials said on Monday they had finalised a symbolic treaty they hoped would lead to an accord.

Under the so-called "Geneva Agreement", Palestinians would found a state in much of the West Bank and Gaza, and there would be shared sovereignty in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials denounced the initiative as a "virtual agreement" that aimed to undermine the elected government.

- REUTERS