Israeli, Palestinian die in Gaza Strip violence

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – An Israeli missile strike killed one Palestinian and wounded five early today, hours after militants killed an Israeli-American woman in the first deadly shelling of a Jewish settlement in Gaza in four years of fighting.

The settlement attack, which came just before the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, was likely to mobilize further opposition to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip next year. The militant Hamas group claimed responsibility for firing two mortars at the Neve Dekalim settlement in southern Gaza.

A Hamas video showed three masked militants setting up and firing a mortar. After the shell was fired, heavy gunfire could be heard – apparently the Israeli return fire at the nearby Palestinian town of Khan Younis. The Israeli fire wounded two Palestinians, including a 4-year-old boy, witnesses said.

One of the Hamas mortars hit a house in Neve Dekalim, wounding two women who were taken to a hospital in southern Israel for treatment. One of the women, identified as Tiferet Tratner, died of her wounds, and the second was slightly hurt. Eran Sternberg, a settler spokesman in Gaza, said Tratner also held U.S. citizenship.

In the early hours today, an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles toward a group of Palestinians on the outskirts of a nearby refugee camp. Hospital officials said the dead and wounded were civilians.

Later, about 70 tanks and army bulldozers drove toward the Khan Younis camp, setting off heavy exchanges of fire, as soldiers called on residents over loudspeakers to leave their homes, witnesses said. Palestinians detonated a roadside bomb next to one bulldozer, setting the front of the vehicle on fire.

The shelling came a day after Palestinians killed three Israeli soldiers in an attack on the nearby Morag settlement in southern Gaza. After a protracted gunbattle, the three attackers were killed by the army.

And on Wednesday, a 19-year-old Palestinian woman killed two officers of the paramilitary border police in a suicide bombing at a crowded Jerusalem bus stop. Zainab Abu Salem, from the Askar refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus ,circumvented several Israeli checkpoints, made her way to Jerusalem and blew up as two paramilitary policemen tried to check her bag at a crowded bus stop. The two officers were killed and 16 people waiting at the bus stop were hurt.

Friday’s violence came hours before Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, when much of Israel shuts down for fasting and prayer. Israeli security forces have been on high alert since last week, the start of the Jewish Near Year, which ushers in a series of holidays that last until October.