Israeli Tanks Meet Fierce Resistance
    By Scott Wilson
    The Washington Post

    Friday 07 July 2006

Clashes in populated area of Gaza kill at least 21 Palestinians, one soldier.

    Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip - Israeli tanks pushed into populated areas here Thursday for the first time since reentering the Gaza Strip last week and met fierce resistance from Palestinians using rocket-propelled grenades, roadside mines and rifles to slow their advance.

    At least 21 Palestinians were killed in the fighting, many from the governing Hamas movement's armed wing, and an Israeli soldier died after being shot in the head by a sniper.

    The battlefield was concentrated along a half-mile strip of homes, dunes and orchards in a western neighborhood of this city, the deepest Israel has reached inside Gaza since evacuating its settlements and military bases here almost a year ago.

    The clashes marked a significant turn in what had been a slow-moving Israeli military effort to free a captured soldier, stop the firing of rockets into southern Israel and weaken Hamas's hold on the Palestinian government. Employing tanks, bulldozers and Apache attack helicopters, the operation also provided a vivid view of the challenges now facing Israel's potent military as it fights a guerrilla force in residential areas.

    "God help us all," said Mohammed Risqa, 13, as he watched and listened to the fighting battering his neighborhood.

    The goal of Israel's operation here at Gaza's northern end is to take control of more territory between the border and the sites where Palestinians have launched rockets at southern Israel, making it harder to reach Israeli cities. In an operation that military officials described as limited in scope, Israeli troops plowed up fields, roads and open areas that have been used as launch sites.

    At the same time, Palestinians launched eight rockets during the day, about half of them landing inside Israel. Awaiting the arrival of Israeli tanks, squads of Hamas gunmen buried mines in piles of curbside garbage and ran hidden detonator wires into residential courtyards.

    A late-afternoon Israeli missile strike on a group of gunmen inflicted most of the Palestinian casualties, filling the overwhelmed emergency rooms of the Kamal Adwan and al-Shifa hospitals with dead and wounded. There were several civilians among the dead, according to wounded witnesses in recovery wards at al-Shifa. Hospital officials said 60 people were wounded, nearly one-third of them children.

    Soon after, a spokesman for Palestinian Interior Minister Saed Siyam of Hamas called on the Palestinian security forces to fight the Israeli incursion, effectively issuing a declaration of war. Khaled Abu Hilal, the spokesman, said those forces, which number more than 70,000 men and are dominated by the rival Fatah party, had a "religious and moral duty to stand up to this aggression and cowardly Zionist invasion."

    Israeli troops began entering Gaza on June 28, three days after an attack by Palestinian gunmen on an Israeli army post just outside Gaza's border. In the raid, carried out by Hamas's military wing and two smaller armed groups, two Israeli soldiers were killed and Cpl. Gilad Shalit, a 19-year-old conscript in his first year of mandatory military service, was captured.

    Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said the military operation is designed to force the Palestinians to release Shalit. His captors have demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, but the Israeli government has rejected any prisoner exchange. Shalit's father, Noam, told reporters Thursday that he favored such an exchange to free his son.

    The Israeli soldier who died after being hit by sniper fire was identified as 1st Lt. Yehuda Bessal. The army said that after Bessal was shot, his airlift evacuation to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba was delayed by continuing Palestinian attacks on his position.

    The majority of the Palestinians killed in the operation so far, including in Thursday's combat, have been members of the armed Palestinian groups at war with Israel. Several of the bodies in the hospital morgues were not dressed in military uniforms, and witnesses here said at least two were civilians.

    Capt. Noa Meir, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said she was unaware of any civilian casualties. She added that the army had made every effort to avoid harming civilians, sometimes in the face of difficult military conditions. "This is an urban area, a very complicated area," Meir said. "We've used the term human shield before, and I think today we saw it used literally."