Palestinian families fled their homes in a village near Khan Yunis on Thursday during an Israelimilitary operation in the Gaza Strip involving troops and tanks backed by helicopter gunships.
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces operating in Gaza killed at least nine Palestinians on Thursday and blew up the houses of some known militant commanders, as the Palestinians fired a Katyusha rocket from Gaza that landed in northern Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people.The rocket landed in an open field and did no damage, but it traveled more than 10 miles, the farthest of any rocket so far from Gaza, the Israeli police said. The Katyusha, a manufactured missile of 122 millimeters, has a range of up to 13.7 miles. There are thought to be fewer than 20 of them in Gaza.
But Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Thursday’s firing showed that the Palestinians were improving their ability to use the weapon and to exploit its range, which could endanger a quarter of a million Israelis, and he called on Egypt to do more to stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.
“It’s a sign of things to come and an issue of great concern,”
Mr. Regev said. “These rockets are not homemade and are smuggled in, and our concern is not one or two Katyushas, but a whole range of weapons, including antitank and antiaircraft rockets.”
Israel is upset with Cairo for allowing more than 2,000 Gazans to return home from the hajj pilgrimage through the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, rather than, as originally agreed, through the Kerem Shalom crossing controlled by Israel. Israel wanted to check the returning pilgrims to see if they were smuggling cash back for Hamas, which runs Gaza, or if some of those returning were wanted militants who had received military training in Lebanon, Syria or Iran.
Mr. Regev denied that there was a diplomatic crisis with Egypt, but said, “There is tension.” Egypt is a crucial ally of Israel, he said. “So we want to try to encourage Egypt to do more, but at the same time to ensure that the relationship remains stable,” Mr. Regev said. “Peace with Egypt is fundamental to us. But if Hamas is allowed through a porous border to strengthen itself, build a more formidable military regime and expand the range of its rockets, it’s not in Egypt’s interests, either.”
Israel continued its attacks on Palestinian militants in Gaza, especially from Islamic Jihad. In an incursion in southern Gaza, in a village near Khan Yunis, Israeli troops and tanks, backed by helicopter gunships, destroyed a house, killing two brothers, Ahmad and Sami Fayyad, their sister, Asma Fayyad, 24, and their mother, Karima Fayyad, 60. Their father, Muhammad Fayyad, a farmer, was wounded.
Medics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis said that Sami Fayyad’s wife was wounded, and that the couple’s 3-year-old daughter was clinically dead.
Sami Fayyad, 30, was a fighter with Islamic Jihad’s military wing. Ahmad Fayyad, 32, was a former member of the Palestinian Authority security forces. Israeli Army spokesmen said the brothers were firing on Israeli forces from alongside and inside the house. The house was hit by at least one tank shell, and Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces, using armored bulldozers, then collapsed the rest of the house.
In a statement, Israel said blame for the deaths of the women “lies with the gunmen, who operated intentionally from a civilian environment.”
At the Khan Yunis hospital were the bodies of two other Palestinian fighters killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops. Munir Burhom, 22, and Burhom Abu Lehyia, age unknown, were members of Hamas’s military wing.
Two more Hamas fighters were also killed Thursday, while more than 30 people were wounded, including five children on the way to school, hit by shrapnel. Three bodies, so far unidentified, were taken from a house destroyed by Israel.
Early Friday, Israeli troops killed at least one Palestinian militant in a clash near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, Reuters reported. It said an Israeli Army spokeswoman said troops had shot at a gunman and confirmed hitting him.
The Israelis also carried out airstrikes on what they said was an Islamic Jihad warehouse in Gaza City and three other military targets. But Palestinians said the Israelis also bombed the Gaza City homes of two senior Islamic Jihad commanders whom the Israelis killed in rocket attacks a week ago or more ago.
The homes, of Karim Dahdouh and Muhammad Abdallah Abu Murshad, were bombed from the air and destroyed. At the time, Israel said they were responsible for making rockets and launching hundreds of them at Israel. Mr. Dahdouh was killed Dec. 17; Mr. Murshad was killed a week ago.
The Israelis, like the British during the Mandate, often destroy the homes of prominent enemies, usually by bulldozer in the occupied West Bank. To destroy homes from the air in Gaza, where Israel no longer keeps a permanent military presence, seems to be a new policy, intended to deter other militants by underlining the risk not just to their own lives but to the livelihood of their families.
Israeli military officials insisted, however, that the four targets bombed were specific military objectives and not homes, and that only one airstrike took place in Gaza City, on the warehouse.
A more primitive Qassam rocket landed in a backyard of the Israeli town of Sderot, damaging a house and sending the owner, a woman, into shock.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops in about 70 jeeps moved into the center of Nablus and arrested three senior members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated to Fatah, and dozens were wounded in the raid. The Israelis are pursuing leads to the killings of two Israeli settlers near Hebron last week, which Israel says was carried out by men affiliated with Fatah.
Mr. Olmert made a surprise visit to Jordan on Thursday to meet with King Abdullah II and update him on talks with the Palestinians before President Bush’s arrival in the region next Wednesday. In their talks, in Aqaba, the king warned Israel against expanding its settlements on occupied land and said such moves threatened to obstruct progress on a lasting peace accord, a palace official told Reuters. The king had met Wednesday with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
Israeli officials said Mr. Olmert told the king that Israel would not build any new settlements in the West Bank and would avoid further land appropriations there, briefed him on the Katyusha rocket strike and said that unless the Palestinians cracked down on terrorism, no progress could be made.
Separately, Israel announced that it had detected the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in poultry in a petting zoo near a kindergarten in the northern, coastal town of Binyamina. The government said that 18 contaminated birds were found dead last week, and it ordered the destruction of poultry and banned the transportation of animals in a two-mile radius of the town.
Friday will be the second anniversary of the stroke that incapacitated former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 79. Doctors at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv said that Mr. Sharon’s condition had changed little and that his body was functioning normally, although he is connected to a feeding tube. They said that he showed some responses to the sound of voices of his close family.
Mr. Sharon “has not been in deep coma since his admission and throughout this period there have been some signs of response to several kinds of stimuli,” the medical statement said.
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