GAZA: Hours after pullout, Israel kills 5 Palestinians, including 4 gunmen

Israeli forces pulled out of a battered northern Gaza town on Tuesday (November 7) after the biggest operation in the Palestinian territory in a year, leaving residents to bury their dead. Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces killed five gunmen and a civilian, militant groups and hospital officials said. Officials said President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would resume talks on Tuesday on a unity government of professional experts that Palestinians hope can lead to resumption of direct international aid to the Palestinian Authority. After watching Israeli armour leave, Palestinians poured into the streets of Beit Hanoun, a town of 30,000 in an area that has been a staging ground for rocket attacks against southern Israel, and then buried more of their dead. Thousands of Palestinians, including gunmen firing in the air, marched in funeral processions for 23 people killed in the past week of fighting. Some were militants, their bodies shrouded in factional flags. In all, Israeli troops killed 52 people, more than half of them militants, during the raids that centred on Beit Hanoun, Palestinian medical officials said. One soldier has been killed. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the operation saying it will not restore security for Israel. "We strongly condemn this and we told the American administration and the Europeans that such a situation cannot help restoring security and stability, if Israel aspired security this is not the way," Abbas told Palestinian national television. Stepping around puddles of sewage, some residents looked shocked at the extent of damage to buildings, roads, water pipes and electricity poles. Director of UNRWA (United Nations Refugee and Works Agency, Karen Abu Zeid toured the ruined town and talked to the local residents. Beit Hanoun's mayor, a member of the governing Islamic group Hamas, said some 40 homes were destroyed and 400 damaged during the fighting, 14 months after Israel completed a withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza following 38 years of occupation. Announcing an end to "Operation Autumn Clouds", the army said it found large amounts of weaponry, including rocket launchers and anti-tank missile launchers, in Beit Hanoun. But a few hours after the withdrawal Israel resumed fighting and launched an additional airstrike on northern Gaza, killing three Palestinians, witnesses reported. Bodies and wounded were taken to hospitals in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Jabalya and Beit Hanoun. Hamas has struggled to govern under Western sanctions that have deepened economic hardship in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The Islamist movement took office in March after beating Abbas' Fatah faction in elections.

ITN Source | November 8, 2006

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