Hundreds of Palestinians sifted through the rubble of their homes today after a devastating three-day Israeli raid on a Gaza Strip refugee camp.
The governor of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt, declared a "disaster area", and UN officials estimated more than 1,000 people had been left homeless after what Israel called a search for arms smuggling tunnels.
Israelis forces killed three Palestinian militants and five civilians, including an eight-year-old boy, in fighting that erupted on Friday with a large-scale incursion by tanks and armoured bulldozers backed by helicopter gunships.
It was part of Israel's stepped-up military activity following a suicide bombing that killed 20 Israelis in the port city of Haifa on October 4th. Unrelenting violence plus Palestinian political infighting have combined to stall a US-backed peace "road map".
Israel withdrew most of its forces yesterday from the Rafah refugee camp - a key militant stronghold - but tanks remained in positions on the edges of battered neighbourhoods as hundreds of residents began trickling back.
