An Israeli shell aimed at a group of militants in southern Gaza Strip slammed into a nearby house early yesterday, decapitating a six-year-old girl in her backyard, Palestinian medical officials and a relative said.
The Israeli military said troops had opened fire at militants preparing to launch rockets into Israel. It said it identified hitting the rocket squad, but was unaware of any Palestinian civilian casualties. Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers reported that one of their gunmen was killed in the Israeli operation in the area.
Moaiya Hassanain, a Gaza Health Ministry official, identified the dead girl as Hadeel al-Smari and said two adult relatives living in her family’s compound near the Israeli border were wounded in the attack. Television news footage showed that the girl’s head had been blown off.
Hadeel’s cousin, Ahmad al-Smari, said Hadeel was in the backyard of her family’s house when a shell struck. It was not immediately clear what she was doing outside.
“I am sure that she was up because no one can sleep day or night because of the army fire and clashes near our homes,” he said in a telephone interview from the hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
Militants fire at Israel from the border area where the family lives, but civilians suffer from the Israeli reprisals, he said.
“Our lives are hell. We cannot sleep or enjoy peace in our houses because of the army fire,” he said.
Israeli military officials say Palestinian militants endanger civilians by using the cover of crowded residential areas to launch attacks.
The violence in Gaza has flared as Israel’s top leadership holds a series of meetings on whether to pursue a truce with Hamas or launch a bruising military operation against it.
Four Israeli civilians have been killed this year, ratcheting up pressure on Israel’s leadership to do something about the near-daily rocket and mortar assaults.
Militants have been bombarding southern Israel with rockets and mortars for seven years, increasing their rate of fire after Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005 and further ratcheting up attacks after Hamas overran Gaza last year. Israel’s military has limited its reprisals to pinpoint attacks, fearing a broad military campaign would result in heavy casualties.
It also fears a Gaza invasion would jeopardize Corporal Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier Hamas has been holding for two years.
Hamas hopes to trade the 21-year-old tank crewman, who was captured in a cross-border raid, for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but Israel has balked at releasing the jailed militants that Hamas wants, some of whom are serving time for fatal attacks against Israelis.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was set to convene his security Cabinet yesterday to discuss whether to accept a truce with Gaza Strip militants, or whether to press ahead with military action to end rocket fire on southern Israel.
The issue was discussed on Tuesday at consultations Olmert held with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
No details emerged from the meeting, but Israeli media reports yesterday said that while Olmert and Livni wanted to give the go-ahead for a military offensives in the enclave, Barak preferred to give Egypt more time to mediate a truce.
Cairo’s mediation has as yet to achieve results.
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