MAGHAZI REFUGEE CAMP (Gaza Strip), July 19: Fourteen Palestinians were killed on Wednesday as Israeli troops moved into a Gaza refugee camp, pushing a campaign to rescue a teenage soldier and stop rocket fire into a fourth week.
Around 80 Palestinians were wounded in Wednesday’s incursion and three militants shot dead by Israeli forces operating in the West Bank town of Nablus, where a soldier was killed by a roadside bomb on Tuesday.
In conjunction with Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, where close to 300 people have been killed also in the name of rescuing captured troops, the security cabinet decided the twin operations would continue with ‘no time-limit’.
Two days after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to fight the Palestinians until ‘terrorism stops’, troops moved into Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza overnight in a new incursion aimed at targeting ‘terror infrastructure’.
“It is a focused operation to target terror infrastructure there, as part of the ongoing effort in which one of its main targets is getting back Gilad Shalit and stopping the launching of Qassam rockets,” a spokeswoman said.
Ground troops have been operating inside the Gaza Strip since June 28, when troops rolled back into the territory in a bid to retrieve Shalit, a corporal whose capture sparked the worst Israeli-Palestinian crisis in months.
At least 94 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since Israel’s assault in Gaza intensified on July 5, with forces currently on the ground both in the centre and southern part of the territory.—AFP
