6 Gaza Militants Killed in Clashes with Israel

[Sadaam_Mariixmaan]

6 Gaza Militants Killed in Clashes With Israel

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By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: June 20, 2007

JERUSALEM, June 20 — In a sudden escalation of Israeli-Palestinian violence today, at least six Palestinian militants were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank, according to army officials and Palestinian news reports, and the Israeli air force attacked two rocket launchers in northern Gaza after they had fired two rockets into Israel.
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Palestinians carrying the body of a man killed in clashes with Israel in Gaza today.
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Mahmud Hams/AFP -- Getty Images

Israel said today it would allow Gazans needing medical treatment at a border camp to cross into Israel.

This was the first time the Israeli military has responded to rocket fire or clashed with Palestinians in Gaza since Hamas seized power there last week.

Amid the violence, Israel continued today to bring sick and wounded Palestinians out of Gaza to hospitals in Israel. Three were evacuated and a fourth, a 17-year-old leukemia patient, was on the way out, army officials said.

Israel’s new defense minister, Ehud Barak, gave an instruction for Israel to deal with all the sick and wounded waiting at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel as a gesture of goodwill, Y-net, the website of Yediot Ahronot, an Israeli newspaper, reported.

In addition, more trucks of food and medical supplies were allowed into Gaza from Israel to avert a looming crisis there now that Hamas is in control.

The rockets from Gaza fell in open areas near the Israeli border town of Sderot, causing no injuries, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

A single rocket was fired from Gaza and landed near Sderot on Monday, the army spokeswoman said. The Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for today’s rocket attack, according to Palestinian reports.

During the last two weeks of May, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired nearly 300 rockets at Israel, and the Israeli air force carried out dozens of strikes, mainly against security compounds belonging to Hamas and rocket-launching cells. The military wing of Hamas stopped launching rockets at the end of May.

Early today, an Israeli ground force moved into southern Gaza looking for wanted men, the army spokeswoman said.

She said there were a number of clashes with armed Palestinians, as a result of which eight Palestinians were shot and one Israeli soldier was lightly wounded.

The Palestinian Maan news agency said that five Palestinians were killed, including two from the Hamas military wing, one from Islamic Jihad and one from the Popular Resistance Committees. The fifth man had not yet been identified.

In addition, the Israeli army raided the village of Kufr Dan, near Jenin in the northern West Bank, to make arrests, the army spokeswoman said, when two of the men they were searching for opened fire. As the army retaliated, both were killed. The army spokeswoman said they were members of Islamic Jihad and had been involved in planning suicide bombings in Israel.

On Tuesday Israel allowed 12 trucks of food and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip and Israeli ambulances evacuated at least two wounded Palestinians from the Gaza side of the Erez border crossing and took them to a hospital in Ashkelon, on the coast of Israel.

Israel sealed the crossings on its border with Gaza after Hamas violently seized power there six days ago.

The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority security services that had operated the Gaza side of the border crossings ran for their lives during the fighting with Hamas. Israel, like much of the West, considers Hamas a terrorist organization and will not deal with it.