Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News

GAZA CITY, 21 April 2004 — Five Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers during an army incursion into the northern Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian medics and witnesses said. Mutassem Nassir, 17, Khaldun Abu Jarad, 24, Ibrahim Raheen, 17, and Mohammed Al-Taniri, 17, and Mohammed Al-Hinawi, 17, were shot dead a few hours apart either by gunfire or shrapnel during the incursion in the Beit Lahiya area.

Another 35 Palestinians were wounded, three of them seriously, the medics added. Israeli military sources said troops had been deployed in the Beit Lahiya area after around 15 makeshift rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip and landed in Israel, wounding nine people and damaging property. Youth hurled stones at a force the army said it ordered into northern Gaza after militants fired rockets and mortars at Jewish settlements and an Israeli town to avenge the assassination of Hamas leader Abdelaziz Al-Rantissi.

Earlier in the day the army units had entered locations in northern Gaza with bulldozers and armored vehicles. A crowd of up to 200 Palestinians confronted the troops, throwing stones and petrol bombs and explosives.

Several Israeli occupation tanks, jeeps and armored vehicles raided the neighborhood of Al-Nadda in northern Gaza Strip near the village of Beit Hanoon, amid opening intensive gunfire at the area, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.

The witnesses said that during the incursion into the area heavy clashes erupted between the Palestinian civilians and the Israeli soldiers, adding that the soldiers had immediately opened indiscriminately live ammunition at them.

Medics at Al-Awda and Shifa Hospitals in Gaza City reported that five Palestinians were killed and 24 wounded after they were hit by the Israeli soldiers’ gunfire.

Tension in Gaza has risen since Israel’s killing of Rantissi in a helicopter strike on Saturday. Hamas vowed to carry out “100 retaliations”. Medics said three Palestinians were killed by army gunfire. Israeli military sources could not confirm any death but said troops fired at a Palestinian who climbed onto an armored vehicle and at Palestinians who shot at the troops, threw grenades, petrol bombs and detonated explosives.

Five soldiers were lightly wounded in the confrontations including one from an explosive device, the sources said. Since Sunday, at least nine Israelis have been wounded in mortar bomb and Qassam rocket attacks on Gaza settlements and the southern Israeli town of Sderot, the army said.

Tension has built in Gaza since Israel killed Rantissi in a missile strike less than a month after Hamas spiritual leader died in a similar attack. Palestinians are also fuming at Israel over a unilateral “disengagement” plan, approved by US President George W. Bush last week, that would mean a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip but a stronger Israeli hold on big chunks of the West Bank.

Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’ Damascus-based political bureau chief, insisted that the movement would soon avenge the deaths of Rantissi and Yassin. “Don’t worry, the retaliation will come, and the resistance (to Israeli occupation) will continue,” Meshaal said in a speech late Monday in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk.

The Israeli government, meanwhile, justified yesterday sweeping restrictions it is to place on Mordechai Vanunu, the nuclear whistleblower on the verge of freedom after 18 years in jail, insisting he still had secrets to tell. As family and friends gathered outside Shikma prison in the southern city of Ashkelon ahead of his release today, the Defense Ministry said Vanunu “still possesses state secrets including some which he has not revealed”.

The ministry confirmed that under a set of restrictions agreed with the Interior Ministry, Vanunu would not be allowed to leave the country, approach any port or airport or make contact with foreigners without prior authorization after his release today.

Vanunu, jailed for leaking information about the Dimona nuclear plant to a British newspaper, has denied that he remains any threat to national security and said he had no more nuclear secrets to reveal.