Israeli troops pull out of northern Gaza after bloody sweep

ISRAEL: Israeli troops and tanks pulled out of northern Gaza early Friday after a bloody two-day sweep, killing 29 Palestinians, but Israeli aircraft pounded the area.

The Israeli army killed five Palestinians on Thursday, including a 75-year-old woman and a child, and the body of a militant was found after the Israelis pulled back.

The raid produced the bloodiest violence since Israel launched its Gaza offensive a month ago, but the world's attention focused on Lebanon, where Israeli forces have been fighting Hezbollah guerrillas since July 12.

Israel's army and air force have been attacking the Gaza Strip to try to stop militants from firing rockets at southern Israel. The Israeli operation began after Hamas-linked militants killed two soldiers and captured a third in a cross-border raid on a military outpost on June 25.

After the Israeli pullout, as residents streamed outside before dawn to inspect the damage, rescue workers found the body of a militant killed in the fighting. Israeli troops tore up farmland and knocked down walls, electricity wires and telephone cables during the incursion.

Militants were removing mines and explosives they planted to try to stop the Israelis. In southern Gaza, Israeli aircraft hit a metal workshop in the city of Khan Younis early Friday, wounding nine people, including two children, hospital officials said.

Nearby buildings were also damaged, and rescue workers were searching through the rubble. The military said the target was a weapons storehouse.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in Algiers that the situation in the Palestinian areas and Lebanon was only likely to get worse after world leaders failed to agree on an immediate cease-fire at a summit in Rome on Wednesday.

"The situation will worsen and the consequences will be very heavy, not only for the region but probably for the entire world," he told Algeria's official APS news agency. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner and Erkki Tuomioja, Finland's foreign minister, visited Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday but did not meet with Palestinian government officials.

Later, at a news conference in Tel Aviv, Tuomioja said of the high casualties in Gaza, "that kind of violence must stop and is not acceptable."

In Gaza on Thursday, five Palestinians were killed. A 75-year-old woman was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell fired at her house near the town of Jebaliya, Palestinian security officials said.

Late Thursday, a 12-year-old boy was killed by Israeli gunfire as he stood on the roof of his house at the edge of the Jebaliya camp across from Israeli forces, residents and hospital officials said.

Gaza City, Friday, AP