Israelis push into Gaza

BY MATTHEW MCALLESTER | Newsday Staff Writer

July 7, 2006

BEIT LAHIYA, GAZA - The Israeli military pushed into residential neighborhoods in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday, killing at least 21 Palestinians. One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian fighter, the Israeli army said - the first Israeli to die in the offensive.

The advance came after Palestinian militants launched two rockets that reached farther inside Israel, to Ashkelon, about six miles north of the Gaza border, than any rocket had before.

It was the largest invasion of Gaza since Israel abandoned settlements there almost a year ago, and the bloodiest day since the June 25 capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Israeli officials said they did not intend to stay in the neighborhoods for a long time, and the purpose of the attack was to help rescue Shalit, 19, and to create a buffer zone to prevent more rockets from being fired.

At Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, one of the two neighborhoods attacked, Abdel Hadi Al-Atar stood in the shade with relatives, his shirt and trousers soaked in the drying blood of his nephew, Mohammed.

Mohammed Al-Atar was now in the hospital morgue.

"We were at home and parts of a shell landed on the house," said Al-Atar, 34, who lives near what had become the front line in Beit Lahiya. "Then they started firing. " For two hours the family was pinned down, desperate to get an ambulance for Mohammed, 25, who was bleeding through a bullet hole in his chest. An ambulance finally made it, apparently by arrangement with the Israeli army, but he died en route to the hospital.

Other witnesses said military bulldozers were razing vines and other crops in the fields that abut the front row of houses in Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the other neighborhood targeted.

"Some militants came and fired a rocket-propelled grenade and then the tanks opened up," said Samir Al-Atar, 23, whose last name is common in Atartra, the part of Beit Lahiya that saw the most intensive fighting. Palestinian health officials said of the 21 dead, at least six were civilians. At least 55 were injured.

The Israeli soldier was killed when a Palestinian fighter came into a house the Israeli and other soldiers had taken over. Another Israeli soldier was injured.

About 300 yards from where an Israeli tank was perched on a street in Beit Lahiya, two ambulances stood in the early afternoon, awaiting word from their dispatchers that the Israelis would not shoot at them if they collected the injured and dead.

From the houses rising on the hill that is Atartra came the frequent pounding of heavy machine guns and the occasional crack of a rifle.

Only 10 yards from the ambulance drivers stood a young man with an automatic rifle. He wore no uniform and mingled with dozens of unarmed youths. He carried a black bag over his shoulder.

"It's a Yassin," he said when asked what was inside. Yassins, named after the assassinated founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, are primitive rockets that Hamas militants fire at Israel's Merkava tanks. They usually bounce off without causing any real damage.

Soon, he met up with two other gunmen, no older than 18, who appeared from nearby alleyways. "Qassam," said one pimply youth when asked which faction he was with - meaning he was in the military wing of Hamas, the group believed to be holding Shalit.

The three militants stuck to the side of a building because of the buzzing sound of an Israeli drone overhead. They continued toward the front line.

Down the road, a man strung wire through the dust of the street. It led from a small pile of rubble, a favorite hiding place for insurgents' roadside bombs. He, too, kept under cover. Not for a long time have Palestinian militants and their political allies had such cause to hide.

In the West Bank, most Hamas lawmakers who have not been arrested and jailed by Israel are on the run. Mahmoud Musleh, a Hamas legislator in hiding, won't answer his cell phone and hasn't seen his family in days. He spoke with Newsday from a safe house in Ramallah where he has been holed up for nearly a week. "Anybody associated with Hamas is a target. We have to be cautious and avoid capture, so our government won't collapse," he said, speaking on a borrowed cell phone.

The fighting in Gaza continued as night fell.

Sonia Verma contributed to this story from Jerusalem.