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Israel Uses Tanks and Machine Guns to Fire into Gaza, Palestinians Say Israelis and Palestinians Trade Gaza Fire
(about 2 hours later)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops used tanks and machine guns to fire toward a residential area in Gaza, killing two civilians and wounding at least 25, after an explosion targeted an Israeli military vehicle on Israel’s border with Gaza, Palestinian officials and witnesses said. GAZA — Palestinian militants fired an antitank missile on Saturday at an Israeli military jeep patrolling Israel’s border with Gaza, and four Palestinians, at least three of them civilians, were killed when Israel returned fire with tank or artillery shells, officials said.
Ayman al-Sahbani, a doctor at Gaza’s Shifa hospital, said all the casualties were civilians and children were among the wounded. The Israeli military said four of its soldiers were wounded in the antitank missile attack. The Gaza Health Ministry said about 26 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire.
Witnesses said the firing hit people who were returning from a funeral near Gaza City. The deadly surge of violence reflected the growing volatility along the border between Israel and Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave that is controlled by the militant Islamic group Hamas. An atmosphere of confrontation has been simmering for months, and has peaked in several rounds of clashes between militant groups firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and Israeli forces carrying out airstrikes against the militant groups.
The Israeli military said they were investigating the incident. Gaza militants often fire rockets from the Israel-Gaza border area toward nearby Israeli communities and clashes with the Israeli military are common. In recent years, Hamas has largely adhered to an informal cease-fire with Israel, but in recent months it has joined more radical groups, including Islamic Jihad and several militants inspired by Al Qaeda, in attacking Israel and avenging the deaths of its militants in Israeli raids. Israel carried out a devastating three-week offensive against the militant groups in Gaza in the winter of 2008-9 after years of persistent rocket fire against southern Israel.
Rami Harra said his 17-year-old brother Muhmmad Harra was killed in the strike. The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack on the military jeep.
”He was at home when the explosion took place. He went out to see what happened and when he started to help evacuating wounded people who were on the ground, another shell hit the place and killed him,” he said outside the morgue. ”Why did they kill him? I can’t believe my eyes that I am seeing his dead body.” Soon after the antitank missile was fired, Israeli forces aimed shells at a hill on the Gaza side of the border where a group of militants was monitoring the Israeli forces, according to a Palestinian witness, Mohammed Abu Alatta, 20, who was wounded.
Israel carried out a broad military offensive in Gaza nearly four years ago in response to years of near daily rocket fire. Major salvos from Gaza have subsided since then, but sporadic rocket fire has continued. Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers have largely refrained from rocket attacks since the devastating Israeli military offensive that killed hundreds of Palestinians. Mr. Abu Alatta, interviewed at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, said civilians who were gathered in a mourning tent nearby, including several teenage boys, ran to the scene to help the wounded militants and were themselves hit by subsequent shells. The three civilians killed were identified as Ahmed Mustafa Harara and his cousin Muhammad Osama Harara, who were both 17, and Ahmed Kamil Dardasawi, 20. The fourth fatality was not immediately identified.
Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks, remains virulently anti-Israel but has sought to keep things quiet as it consolidates control of Gaza, which it seized five years ago during a brief civil war against the rival Fatah movement. Still, it is under pressure from smaller groups to prove that it remains in confrontation with the Jewish state. On Thursday, the Israeli military said, explosives packed into a tunnel were detonated along the border, causing a huge blast while soldiers were carrying out routine work along the security fence nearby. The military wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for the explosion.
The territory is home to numerous militant groups, including Al Qaeda-inspired organizations that do not answer to Hamas. Gaza has also been flooded with weapons in recent years, many of them believed to have been smuggled from northern Africa and into Gaza through tunnels under the Egyptian border.

Fares Akram reported from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.