Mideast - AFP
Three Palestinians killed, 17 wounded in Gaza Strip blast
Date: Tue, Aug 03, 2004
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Three Palestinians were killed and 17 wounded by a massive explosion during an Israeli army incursion into the flashpoint southern Gaza Strip (news - web sites) town of Rafah.
The three dead were named as Akram Hadidi, 31, Maisara Abu Soneima, 19, and Mohammed Abu Naba, 18.
Among the wounded were three children under the age of 10 as well as a Palestinian cameraman for the Reuters news agency.
Witnesses said the blast was caused by a tank shell, but Israeli sources insisted their forces had nothing to do with the explosion.
"The last time we fired in the area was about an hour and a half before. For sure it had nothing to do with us," he said.
Rafah has been the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting in the Middle East conflict in recent months, with some 40 Palestinians killed during a major Israeli offensive in May.
Meanwhile, three Palestinians, two of them children, were injured by Israeli gunfire in two separate incidents in Gaza late on Tuesday, Palestinian medics told AFP.
In Rafah, a 10-year-old boy was seriously injured when he was hit in the back by a bullet, they said, while in the northern town of Beit Hanun, an 11-year-old boy and a 22-year-old woman were moderately wounded by Israeli gunfire.
Israeli armour poured into Beit Hanun in late June in a bid to prevent Palestinian militants from using the area as a launchpad for firing makeshift Qassam rockets into Israel.
In response to the ongoing incursion in Beit Hanun, Hamas' military wing threatened to rain down rockets on the southern Israeli town of Sderot if the army does not withdraw.
"Residents of Sderot, stop your army's crimes and get it out of Beit Hanun, or else you will be the ones paying the price," a masked gunmen warned on footage aired by the Dubai-based satellite channel Al-Arabiya.
"We have decided to send you Qassam rockets to whatever place you thought was safe. We have prepared rockets that can reach wherever we want ... and we will continue to bombard you daily," he said, reading from a statement.
It is believed to be the first such videotaped warning by Hamas which has been behind the majority of anti-Israeli attacks during the nearly four-year-long intifada.
Hamas representatives joined other delegates from the armed Palestinian factions Tuesday in Cairo ahead of talks with Egyptian officials who have been playing a key mediation role over Israel's planned pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Factional sources said the overall leader of Hamas, politburo chief Khalid Meshaal, had arrived in Cairo and was expected to meet with intelligence officials.
Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has held a series of meetings with Palestinian and Israeli leaders about Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza next year, with Cairo determined to ensure the pullout does not lead to chaos on its borders.
Israel has cut off contacts with the Palestinians over their failure to put a halt to attacks by militant groups.
However, Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei said Tuesday that contacts had been made with the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) about the arming of Palestinian policemen in a bid to counter rising anarchy in the territories.
Meanwhile, an Israeli parliamentary committee on Tuesday revealed a string of serious security flaws at strategic military and civilian sites across Israel, including Ben Gurion airport and the country's largest port in the northern city of Haifa.
Details were revealed in a report compiled after committee members visited more than sixty "sensitive" targets in Israel, uncovering numerous security "weak points", committee chairman Efraim Sneh told Israel public radio.
SOURCE
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