 A Palestinian youth throws stones at an Israeli tank © AFP Jaafar Ashtiyeh |
And in Nablus, the major city in the north of the reoccupied West Bank, two Palestinians were shot dead in a major Israeli sweep of the city's old centre, the Casbah.
The death toll of almost 29 months of the Palestinian uprising spiked sharply as up to 50 Israeli tanks backed by helicopters staged yet another raid into Gaza City to smash metal workshops allegedly producing ordnance for the hardline Islamist group Hamas.
Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz vowed to hit hard at Hamas in its Gaza stronghold after the group blew up an Israeli tank in the territory on Saturday, killing all four soldiers inside.
In heavy fighting on Gaza's streets, the army destroyed several buildings. Palestinian officials said three of the dead -- two brothers and a cousin in their early 20s -- were killed when a demolished building collapsed on them.
Three others were security officials on patrol to prevent Hamas firing their home-made Qassam missiles at Israel when an Apache helicopter blasted their car, the officials said.
"Israel destroyed all the measures we took to try to prevent this kind of attack," said a senior Palestinian official.
One of the 11 dead was a Hamas suicide bomber who blew himself up near an Israeli tank, Hamas said.
Hours after the raid, Hamas fired four rockets on the southern Israeli town of Sderot, just across the Gaza border, injuring three people, the army said.
It was the first time since January 26 that the rockets have been fired, as Palestinian Authority security forces had been trying to prevent them and avoid further devastating Israel raids into the densely-populated Gaza Strip, which unlike the West Bank has not been reoccupied.
Gaza has been the target of increasing raids since Israel wrested control of the West Bank, although analysts say Israel is unlikely to reoccupy its towns and refugee camps -- bastions of hardline militants -- before a US-led war on Iraq.
In response to the rocket attack, Israeli forces set up roadblocks cutting Gaza into three isolated sectors. A Palestinian farmer was later seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire while working his land near Khan Yunis in the south.
 Relatives of Nasser Abu Safieto pray next to his body © AFP Jaafar Ashtiyeh |
"The Israeli government is taking advantage of the international situation to commit crimes against the Palestinian people," it said, referring to spotlight being on the Iraq crisis.
The French and Russian governments also expressed deep concern about the Israeli raids.
Two Palestinians, one a mentally ill young man out on the street during an army-imposed curfew, were shot dead in Nablus as the army moved into the city centre to conduct house searches, Palestinian officials said.
The other death was a youth who threw a petrol bomb at the army.
Sixteen other people were injured in the clashes, medics said.
And in Jenin, to the north of Nablus, a militant from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, was blown to pieces when his car exploded.
Palestinian security officials and Al-Aqsa members blamed Israel, saying the explosion was an assassination carried out with a remote-control device. Israel has killed dozens of militants in such targeted hits.
 An injured Israeli man is taken to Beer Sheva hopital in southern Israel © AFP Alberto Dankberg |
The latest violence has further dimmed hopes for the much-touted "roadmap" for Middle East peace which is being proposed by the so-called "quartet" of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.
That plan has yet to be made public and the quartet said it would wait to announce it until after the January 28 Israeli election, which saw Sharon easily re-elected on a pledge to maintain his hard line on the Palestinians.