Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News

JERUSALEM, 15 May 2004 — Palestinian fighters blew up two Israeli soldiers in an armored vehicle in the Gaza Strip yesterday, in the third deadly ambush of Israeli troops this week as the Jewish state began demolishing rows of Palestinian houses.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said they mounted the attack in the Rafah refugee camp while soldiers were destroying buildings along the Gaza-Egypt border corridor that Israel controls and plans to widen with a mass demolition of homes.

The ambush occurred not far from the spot where Palestinian fighters blew up a troop carrier on Wednesday, killing five Israelis, and while soldiers were still combing the sandy soil for remains of their dead comrades.

The latest deaths bring to 13 the number of soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip this week, the worst blow to the Israeli Army in two years.

Polls showed deepening support in Israel for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza pullout plan, now stalled by hard-liners in his own rightist party, as this week’s losses reminded Israelis of the high cost of the hard-to-defend Gaza settlements.

The Gaza violence has also raised concern among Israeli military planners that Palestinians have adopted the tactics of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters that eventually ended Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.

Israeli political sources had said dozens or even hundreds of Palestinian homes in Rafah refugee camp, on the edge of the Philadephi buffer zone, would be razed in a bid to deny cover to Palestinians who attack troops daily.

Carrying white flags and belongings, Palestinians in Rafah fled in the path of armored bulldozers, which knocked down two clusters of five houses each in an initial assault and threatened many more structures.

Helicopter gunships fired two missiles into the camp, wounding one person, and sowing panic among refugees.

“We are trying to get some clothes and whatever we can carry before they knock down the house,” said Mohammad Al-Basiouni, 32. He said 65 people lived in his three-story building.

Israel has already destroyed hundreds of structures in the camp while trying to uncover weapons smuggling tunnels during the past three-and-a-half years of intifada.

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat condemned the corridor’s expansion as a “total contradiction” to what Sharon has presented as a “disengagement” initiative to reduce points of conflict.

Paul McCann, spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency challenged Israel’s justification for the demolitions. “It’s impossible to believe that every one of these houses shelters militants or the entrance to a tunnel,” he said, pointing out that occupants only abandoned the “empty buildings” because of the constant danger of being killed or wounded and eventually expelled by the Israeli Army.