Four Palestinians were killed, including a 12-year-old boy, and at least 75 other wounded by Israeli fire in Beit Hanun Saturday after troops rolled in and captured the self-rule Gaza Strip town and imposed a curfew, Palestinian hospital and security sources said.
Yasser's Arafat top advisor Nabil Abu Rudeina accused Israel of "overstepping all red lines" and urged the United States and the international community to intereve and put an end to "this dangerous situation".
Two teenagers and a 12-year-old boy were shot dead as they joined hundreds of other Palestinian youths throwing stones at the Israeli tanks positioned in the town.
A Palestinian border policeman was also killed and 75 other people wounded, 15 of them critically, during the Israeli operation and ensuing violence, the sources said.
The latest deaths bring to 1,101 the number of people killed during the nearly 15-month Palestinian uprising, including 845 Palestinians and 233 Israelis.
Israeli troops and tanks rolled into Beit Hanun overnight in a massive search operation for militants from the radical Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas and launched a similar raid on Tal el-Sultan in Rafah, further south.
As the occupation continued Saturday, hundreds of Palestinian youths attacked Israeli tanks with stones and set tires ablaze, sending plumes of thick smoke into the sky.
Intermittently, a tank would move toward the youths, provoking panic as it opened fire with a machine gun, before pulling back and coming under another hail of stones.
The army also said it arrested five Palestinians, branding Beit Hanun a "bastion of Hamas" and imposing an unprecedented curfew on the town.
Palestinian security sources said however that 10 people were arrested while residents identified three of them as Hamas members.
It was the first time the Israeli army occupy an autonomous territory since the Palestinian Autonomy was set up in 1994.
"We hold Israel fully responsible for this escalation and aggression against the Palestinian people and their national authority," Abu Rudeina told AFP.
"The occupation of Beit Hanun ... is a dangerous move and we call on the international community, particularly the United States, to intervene quickly to put and end to this dangerous situation," he said.
Israel, he said, "is overstepping all the red lines and is destroying all the efforts to revive the peace process."
US Veto
The United States vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution early Saturday that it said ignored the recent spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis, exercising its veto power for only the second time in over four years.
"It is with regret that the United States has decided to make use of its veto to block this resolution," said US Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte during the meeting of the Security Council.
"Unfortunately the resolution before us fails to address the dynamic at work in the region. Instead its purpose is to isolate politically one of the parties to the conflict," Negroponte said.
"It never mentions the recent acts of terror(ism) against Israelis or those responsible for them."
Twelve members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution, with two abstentions by the United Kingdom and Norway.
The resolution, co-sponsored by Tunisia and Egypt, condemns "all acts of terror, in particular those targeting civilians," and "all acts of extrajudiciary executions, excessive use of force and wide destruction of properties."
The text further called for the immediate cessation of "all acts of violence, provocation and destruction," a resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians and implementation of recommendations made in the Mitchell Report on Middle East violence.
The resolution also encourages establishment of a "monitoring mechanism" to aid in implementing the Mitchell report and to "help create a better situation in the occupied Palestinian territories."
Israel has said it opposes such a mechanism.
Palestinian policeman killed in Gaza Strip
A Palestinian police officer was killed overnight during an Israeli military incursion into the town of Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian hospital source said Saturday.
Ahmed Bassiouni, 28, died of a haemorrage after being wounded in the leg by Israeli gunfire. Fourteen other people, four of them police officers, were also wounded, the hospital source said.
The death brought to 1,098 the total number of people killed since the start of the intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation, in September 2000, including 842 Palestinians and 233 Israelis.
Israeli army kills Palestinian trying to infiltrate settlement
The Israeli army said Saturday it killed an armed Palestinian overnight as he tried to infiltrate the Gush Katif bloc of Jewish settlements in the southern Gaza Strip.
A statement said soldiers came across the man, who had made a breach in the security fence and who was "carrying an ammunition belt and, apparently, a belt of explosives."
It said the patrol opened fire and killed him.
An army spokesman said investigators were determining whether the man actually was carrying explosives.
The man's death brings to 1,099 the number of people killed as a direct result of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, including 843 Palestinians and 233 Israelis.-(AFP)
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