Israeli tanks roll into Gaza
Three Palestinians were killed and 20 other people wounded by Israeli gunfire when tanks and armoured vehicles entered the Rafah refugee camp on the Gaza-Egypt border today, hospital officials said.
The army said the raid was a part of its ongoing efforts to expose weapons smuggling tunnels and that troops had fired at and hit four people trying to lay explosive devices near the soldiers.
Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher has returned home after his one-day peace mission to Israel deteriorated into a shoving match with Palestinian extremists that landed him in hospital.
The confrontation yesterday afternoon at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, came after Maher heard a strong indication from the Israelis that while they would not sign a truce with Palestinian militants, they would abide by a cease-fire.
The violence Maher was trying to stop continued yesterday. In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian threw a grenade at Israeli soldiers in Gaza during a firefight, killing two officers, the army said. The attacker and another armed Palestinian were killed, the military said.
In a call to The Associated Press, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a group loosely linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, and the Islamic Jihad took joint responsibility.
Maher appeared badly shaken as bodyguards and Israeli police whisked him out of the mosque compound, while protesters shouted and hurled shoes – a deep insult in Islamic culture. The guards supported Maher by his shoulders as he grimaced in pain and clutched his chest.
Witnesses heard him gasping, “I’m going to choke, I’m going to choke,” as he exited the compound in a bedlam of shoving and shouting through a gate above the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site.
Israeli rescue workers treated him for a half hour before he was transferred by limousine to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital. He was released five hours after the incident and flew home.
In a phone call to Maher at the hospital, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon quipped: “I understand you will stay with us a while.”
It was a rare assault on an official from a Muslim country at the site known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif, revered as the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. Jews honour the site as the Temple Mount, which housed the biblical Jewish Temples.
Witnesses said the protesters, several dozen in number, were members of a small extremist group called “Islamic Liberation Movement” They shouted at Maher, “You’re not welcome here!” and charged that Egypt was helping Israel oppress the Palestinians. “You are collaborating with the killers of Muslims,” one shouted.
Israeli police said they arrested seven suspects over the attack on Maher.
