Israeli-Palestinian truce tested by deaths

JERUSALEM -- A fledgling truce between Israel and the Palestinians was severely tested Thursday by clashes that killed five Palestinians and wounded 22 on the eve of the first anniversary of the Palestinian uprising.

The cease-fire faces fresh challenges on Friday, when several radical Palestinian groups opposed to compromise with Israel plan mass protests to mark one year since the start of the uprising that has claimed the lives of 647 people on the Palestinian side and 177 on the Israeli side.

The latest fighting came despite pledges by both sides to enforce the truce, sought by the United States as it tries to bring Arab and Muslim states into its anti-terror coalition.

Palestinians accused Israel of trying to undermine a truce agreement reached on Wednesday between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"It's an attempt by the Israeli army and some people inside the Israeli government to blow up and destroy the results of the Peres-Arafat meeting and we hold the Israeli government responsible for this dangerous escalation," said Arafat spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh.

No Israeli officials were available for comment Thursday. All institutions and businesses were shut for Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

At Wednesday's meeting, Peres and Arafat agreed to resume security cooperation and take a series of confidence-building measures. Israel promised to ease its stifling closures of Palestinian communities in the coming days.

Homes demolished

The army said it demolished several homes in the Gaza Strip's Rafah refugee camp in response to a bomb attack Wednesday on an Israeli army post on the edge of the camp, along the Israeli-Egyptian border. Three soldiers were wounded in the blast, for which the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility.

Just before midnight Wednesday, Israeli tanks and a bulldozer moved toward Rafah as troops fired from tank-mounted machine guns at the camp, Palestinian security officials said. Tanks also fired shells, the officials said.

Palestinian gunmen returned fire, and the fighting lasted for more than three hours, the officials said.

Three camp residents were killed and 22 wounded, including four who were in serious condition, doctors said. Tanks drove about 100 yards into Palestinian territory during the raid, Palestinian security officials said.

There had been no attacks on soldiers before the incursion, the army said.

Later in the day, troops manning a watchtower next to Rafah shot and killed a 14-year-old boy, said Ali Musa, a doctor at the local hospital.

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot a Palestinian man in the head near the town of Deir el Balah, a Palestinian security official said. The wounded man died in a hospital.

Palestinian police patrolled Rafah hotspots Thursday, where a general strike was declared and the town's population gathered for the funeral of those killed during the fighting.

The army denied it entered a Palestinian area, saying the houses demolished were in a buffer zone near the border that is under Israeli security control. It said it demolished several houses that had served as cover for weapons smugglers and that underneath one house, soldiers found the entrance to a tunnel the army said was used in the attack on the military outpost a day earlier.

The Rafah refugee camp has been a trouble spot throughout the past year of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

The camp was singled out in the Peres-Arafat meeting.

"We told them (the Palestinians) that we would rebuild the army post which was destroyed at Rafah," Peres said. "They (the Palestinians) said they would send a very serious force to Rafah in order to put a halt to the shooting there."