GAZA CITY, Sept 24: Israel killed nine Palestinians in a massive military raid into Gaza City on Monday night, then rejected a UN security council vote calling it to end its siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Israeli troops launched their biggest incursion yet and one of the bloodiest in the hunt for militants in the Gaza Strip, drawing fresh Palestinian accusations of “war crimes” and predictions that a full-scale reoccupation was planned.

Israeli units including more than 80 armoured vehicles, backed by helicopters, stormed into Gaza City on Tuesday morning, sparking gunbattles which lasted five hours and left nine Palestinians dead and at least 20 wounded, three critically, medical sources said.

Among the dead were militants from the military wing of the Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a radical armed offshoot of Arafat’s mainstream Fatah, both responsible for killing dozens of Israelis in suicide and other attacks.

The army reported no Israeli casualties and said it had achieved its “triple objective”: to destroy the home of a wanted militant and metal workshops which Israel suspects are being used to make rockets and mortars, and to “kill armed elements who opened fire” on its troops.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat called the operation “a war crime”, and said it heralded Israel’s reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced on Monday that he intended to hit Palestinian organizations based in the Gaza Strip, Israeli public television reported.

“We have not achieved our mission in the Gaza Strip. The day will come when we will have to hit Hamas and the Islamic Jihad,” he said during a ceremony.

Israeli forces made two other incursions into the Gaza Strip on Monday night.

Ten tanks, accompanied by a bulldozer, rolled two kilometres into the Beit Lahia area, in the northern Gaza Strip, without opening fire, the sources said.—AFP