Israeli troops kill seven in raid in Gaza Strip

Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including an eight-year-old boy, in a raid in the Gaza Strip yesterday while mediators struggled to resolve a Palestinian leadership crisis.

Accusing militants of trying to acquire anti-aircraft missiles, Israel sent dozens of tanks backed by helicopter gunships into the Rafah refugee camp on the Gaza-Egypt border for what it said was a search for arms-smuggling tunnels.

Troops fought fierce battles with gunmen in the largest army raid in months into the militant stronghold, which followed a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed 20 people last Saturday in the Israeli port city of Haifa.

In the West Bank, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat made his first public appearance in three days, attending Friday prayers in an apparent attempt to dispel rumours he might have had a heart attack or is suffering from stomach cancer.

His doctor said he was in good health and recovering well from a stomach ailment. Mr Arafat, a longtime symbol of Palestinian nationalism, looked pale but showed no sign of strain as he bowed and kneeled in prayer at his Ramallah compound.

Palestinian sources said troops shot dead at least two militants in the Gaza raid but most of the others killed were unarmed civilians, including an eight-year-old boy hit in the head by tank shell shrapnel and a 15-year-old youth.

One body arrived in hospital with the head nearly blown off, witnesses said.

Medics said 60 people - among them eight children and at least 10 gunmen - were wounded, some of them when a helicopter fired a missile into the camp.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior Arafat aide, described the Israeli operation in Rafah as a "war crime and human catastrophe".

Israeli military sources said troops carrying out the raid, codenamed Operation Root Canal, had uncovered two tunnels suspected as arms smuggling conduits but found no weapons.

Defending the raid, Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said: "Israel is compelled again to do the work that the Palestinian Authority is supposed to do."

On the stormy Palestinian political front, officials said they were engaged in "telephone diplomacy" to persuade the new prime minister, Ahmed Qurie, to drop his threat to resign.

Mr Qurie maintained public silence in an apparent dispute with Mr Arafat over security powers that are crucial to a revival of Middle East peacemaking stalled by violence in a three-year-old uprising for independence.

Just days after being sworn in, Mr Qurie, who has a history of close ties to Mr Arafat, threatened to quit on Thursday in the face of opposition from a number of Palestinian lawmakers to his efforts to form a crisis cabinet.