Israel kills 7 in Gaza battle-Palestinian officials
Source: Reuters
(Adds Palestinian Prime Minister) By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including at least three gunmen, and wounded about 20 people in fighting in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Palestinian officials said. An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops, on an operation in the northern part of the territory to curb Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, shot at least 10 gunmen in exchanges of fire. She said she did not know their condition. Local residents said Israeli fire initially killed three gunmen paying a condolence call at a mourning tent set up by a family of a militant shot dead by Israeli soldiers in an earlier incident. Israeli media reports said troops ambushed the men. Believing the shooting was coming from the home of neighbours locked in a feud with the grieving family, other militants in the tent began firing at the house, townspeople said. Realising their mistake, they then directed their fire towards Israeli forces and a gunbattle ensued, the residents said. When the smoke cleared, seven Palestinians were dead and some 20 wounded, a Palestinian Health Ministry official said, blaming Israeli gunfire for all the casualties and basing his account on information from ambulance crews at the scene. One of the dead, Atar Shinbari, was a senior commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group that frequently fires rockets into southern Israel. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of the governing Hamas Islamist group, condemned the killings in Gaza, on Eid al-Fitr, one of the two biggest Muslim celebrations. "We urge the international community to intervene to stop the aggression," he told reporters. Israel, which pulled troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip last year, launched a ground offensive in the territory in June after militants, tunnelling under the border, seized an Israeli soldier. More than 260 Palestinians, half of them civilians, have been killed since the Israeli operation began, according to residents and hospital officials. At least 21 Palestinians have been killed in internal violence in the Gaza Strip this month, part of a power struggle between Hamas movement and President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.
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