Israeli officials weigh reprisals after fatal shootings

JERUSALEM -- Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian toddler and wounded two others in Gaza Monday, hospital officials and witnesses said. The shooting came as Israeli leaders weighed a military response to a Palestinian shooting rampage that killed five people, including a mother and her two young sons.

In the second straight day of violence to take children's lives, the 2-year-old boy was killed shortly after 7 p.m. while he played ball in Rafah. Israel's army said forces had returned fire and knew of no casualties, while the boy's uncle said there had been no fighting in the area.

Meanwhile, expectation mounted of an Israeli operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, where Israeli officials said Sunday's shooting rampage in Kibbutz Metzer -- a community that symbolized Jewish-Arab coexistence -- had been planned.

Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which are allied with Yasser Arafat's Fatah group, claimed responsibility for the kibbutz attack. Israel said it showed the insincerity of the Palestinian leader's recent condemnations of attacks on civilians, but Palestinians maintained the shooting was carried out by rogues and Arafat promised an investigation.

Either way, the violence bodes ill for the mission of U.S. envoy David Satterfield, who arrived Monday to promote a plan for restarting Mideast peace negotiations and establishing a Palestinian state with provisional borders by next year.

Satterfield was to meet Monday with other representatives of the so-called Quartet backing the plan -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations.

Daily violence

But notions of renewing peace talks seemed a world away from the daily grind of deadly violence, which two years of myriad Israeli military measures have failed to quell -- and the killing of the boy in Gaza was sure to further inflame passions.

Officials at Rafah Hospital officials said 2-year-old Nafez Mashal died from a bullet wound to the back. They said two other children, ages 8 and 14, were moderately wounded.

The dead boy's uncle said there was no fighting going on at the time he was killed. "The boy was playing with a small ball -- suddenly we came under fire," said Mohammed Mashal, the uncle. "When we looked toward the boy we found him lying on the ground in a pool of his blood."

The army, which maintains an observation post on the nearby border with Egypt, said it shot in response to shooting by Palestinians and was unaware of casualties. In the past, Israeli troops responding to Palestinian gunfire and grenade attacks have hit Palestinian civilians.

Earlier in the day, an angry Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz toured stricken Kibbutz Metzer, including the bedroom of Noam Ohion, 4, and brother Matam, 5, slain with their mother Revital while -- neighbors said -- reading a bedtime story.

A weeping Avi Ohion, ex-husband of the mother and father of the boys, described how Noam would only go to sleep with one pacifier in his mouth and another in his hand. "How can a man -- if you can call him a man -- shoot a boy with two pacifiers and kill him? ... Three entire worlds have disappeared. They loved life so much."

Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said the Israeli response will be "within the parameters" of other recent actions -- seeming to rule out the expulsion of Arafat, even though the government's top decision-makers, Sharon, Mofaz and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have supported the idea.