Ten Palestinians, including a four-year-old girl, were killed during Israeli swoops in the Gaza Strip on Monday that touched off fierce battles with gunmen, witnesses said. The bloodshed in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza and around the town of Beit Lehiya in the north was a fresh blow to U.S. and British attempts to promote the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace as possible war in Iraq approaches. Israeli infantry in armored personnel carriers, backed by several tanks and attack helicopters, rolled into Nuseirat, a stronghold of the militant Islamic group Hamas, before dawn and left several hours later after demolishing a house. The incursion came a day after an Israeli army bulldozer killed an American woman protester in the Gaza Strip as she demonstrated against a house demolition in the southern town of Rafah. The army called the death a “regrettable accident.” At Nuseirat, Mohammed a-Sa’afin, a local leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, took to the roof of his home after Israeli special forces surrounded it. “Give up, think of your children,” an Israeli officer shouted at him. Sa’afin replied with pipe bombs and a volley of bullets from his Kalashnikov rifle. He was shot dead. Full Story
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