The Israeli army continued its military campaign in two Palestinian refugee camps, killing six Palestinians including an eight-year-old girl and losing another soldier, amid mounting international concern.
Clashes were still continuing in the West Bank camp of Jenin, where six Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in fierce firefights, but the fighting was said to have died down in Balata, near Nablus.
According to Palestinian witnesses, an Israeli soldier was also killed in the clashes in Jenin, though the Israeli army refused to confirm the report.
A total of 19 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers have been killed in the army's first incursions inside refugee camps since the beginning of the 17-month-old Palestinian intifada, which has now killed 1,308 people, including more than 1,000 Palestinians.
The Israelis describe Jenin as "a central location for terrorist members who have carried out attacks causing the murders of dozens of innocent Israelis."
In Balata, known as a bastion of the increasingly active Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, houses were destroyed and Israeli public radio reported that troops found a workshop where militants manufactured weapons.
"Above all, we have proved to the Palestinians that there is no sanctuary and no immunity inside the Palestinian Authority areas," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Mr Raanan Gissin said. "The Palestinian Authority has one clear choice: go in and do it themselves.
According to Palestinian hospital sources, some 135 Palestinians were wounded in Balata in yesterday’s clashes.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, a seven-year-old boy was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while playing outside his home, and a 15-year-old deaf mute lost a leg when he was hit by a tank shell while collecting wood, security sources said.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called on the Israelis to withdraw from the camps and urged both sides to take action to avoid civilian casualties. The United States urged Israel to show restraint, while Germany also called for an immediate end to the violence.
France, Denmark and Sweden also joined the chorus, while Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat urged the international community to take rapid action "before the region explodes."
French doctor Marcel-Francis Kahn, just returned from the camps, told a Paris news conference that Israel's incursions and refusal to allow ambulances and doctors past roadblocks is killing people in desperate need of medical aid.
The Israeli government "is holding a whole population hostage", he said, accusing Israel of flagrantly violating international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions.
Palestinian officials accuse Mr Sharon of trying to torpedo a Saudi peace initiative which would trade Arab recognition of Israel for a pullout by the Jewish state of all the territories it occupied after the 1967 Middle East war.
The proposals, intended to be put to the Arab summit in Beirut at the end of this month, have been generally welcomed.
AFP