Israeli Forces Fire on Crowd in Gaza, Killing 8

Dear Readers,

Exactly what "terror" Israel is protecting itself from? By demolishing buildings, killing unarmed civilians including children, and "peace lover" Mr. Bush from thousands of miles away appeasing his Jewish voting block among the powerful voters, says that Israel has every right to defend itself from terror.

The world just watches, helplessly, while the continuing saga of massacres continues in the occupied territory of Palestine. And when a Palestinian terrorist blows himself up, killing scores of innocent Israelis in retaliation, then the condemnation would be flooding, it would not be the mild "troubling" comment, it would be outright condemnation flip-flopping in hyphenated double-standard.

Has Palestinian lives become so cheap?

Mr. Sharon is restless in his killing spree, Mr. Arafat is clueless in asserting leadership while the innocent men, women and children die in the midst.

Shame on this so-called "humanity"!

Shame on this so-called "civilization"!

Regards,
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
May 19, 2004



Israeli Forces Fire on Crowd in Gaza, Killing 8

Wed May 19, 2004 08:28 AM ET

By Cynthia Johnston
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli forces opened fire on a protest march in a besieged Gaza refugee camp on Wednesday, killing eight Palestinians and raising the death toll in Israel's heaviest raid in the Gaza Strip in years to 31.

Some witnesses reported seeing helicopter gunships launching missiles while others said tanks fired shells into a peaceful crowd of thousands, sending people fleeing in panic, some dragging bloodied comrades with them.

"I saw bodies dismembered, blood everywhere," one witness said as smoke rose from the scene.

Medics said eight people were killed and at least 50 wounded in the strike, which raised the two-day death toll to one of the highest in three and a half years of conflict. The Israeli army had no immediate comment.

The marchers had been surging toward the Tel Sultan neighborhood, the focal point of Israel's sweep into Rafah for the stated purpose of hunting militants and uncovering tunnels used to smuggle weapons across the border from Egypt.

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians and demanded the mass surrender of militants. The army said it hit gunmen. Palestinians said the dead, aged 14, 19, 24 and 37, were all civilians.

Bodies piled up in a flower freezer converted into a makeshift morgue after overflowing the Rafah refugee camp's main hospital where staff strained to cope with the dead along with dozens of wounded in two days of Israeli military assaults.

Rafah residents flooded the hospital, looking for loved ones among the wounded. "Did you see my brothers, the three of them who were in the rally?" cried one person. "Where is Ahmed?" a woman shouted.

Soldiers in the Tel Sultan neighborhood, a militant stronghold, called on loudspeakers for armed militants to come out waving white flags of surrender or risk demolition of family homes. Troops searched house to house amid clashes with gunmen.

The raid has raised an international outcry because of Israeli threats to flatten hundreds of Rafah homes to widen an army-controlled security corridor along the border with Egypt.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces were summoning all male residents over 16 to come out and assemble in a local school. The army said it was after militants, not all males.

Some residents said they had heard of neighbors being shot at by troops after emerging. The army said some militants were firing wildly from rooftops while other men surrendered. Neither of these reports could be confirmed.
SHARON REVIVES GAZA PULLOUT PLAN

Amid the bloodshed, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon worked to revive his Gaza withdrawal plan, which aides said may be presented for cabinet approval as early as next week.

Violence has worsened in Gaza since Sharon proposed evacuating troops and Jewish settlers in a plan backed by most Israelis and the United States, but rejected by his right-wing Likud party in a referendum earlier this month.

Militant groups want to claim as a victory any pullout by Israel from territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East war, while the army is determined to smash them first.

President Bush called the Gaza bloodshed "troubling" but, addressing Jewish-Americans in a tight election campaign, told the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC that Israel "has every right to defend itself from terror."

Before the raid, thousands of Palestinians loaded bedding, furniture and clothes on donkey carts and rickety trucks and fled, fearing their houses were earmarked for demolition.

The Rafah assault drew U.N. and European Union condemnation. Thousands of Palestinian houses have been razed since the Palestinian uprising began in 2000, U.N. figures show.

Military officials said there were no plans for any systematic demolition during the operation.

The army said its forces destroyed the house of a militant who killed a pregnant settler and her four daughters in a May 2 ambush in Gaza. The attack contributed to the rejection of Sharon's Gaza pullout plan by his own rightist party.

An army spokesman said troops flattened five buildings from which militants had fired on soldiers and a sixth was blown up when a bomb being prepared by a militant detonated prematurely.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5192002&src=rss/topNews§ion=news