Gaza Offensive Death Toll Climbs to 24

GAZA CITY ? Israel pressed ahead with its deadly Gaza offensive Friday, November 3, taking to 24 the number of people killed, including women and children, and damaged a mosque.

Three Palestinians, including a woman, who were protesting for Israeli troops to lift a siege on a mosque in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, where dozens of Palestinian youths and resistance fighters were holing up, were shot dead by Israeli gunfire on Friday, a medical source told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The young men restored to the mosque to avoid demands by the Israeli army that all men between the ages of 16 and 45 should gather at the local stadium, witnesses said.

Reuters television pictures showed dozens of women screaming and crying as they carried the dead and wounded away.

Israeli bulldozers earlier demolished a wall of the mosque, and troops fired stun grenades and teargas into the compound to try to force the gunmen to surrender.

A hospital doctor in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya said another 15 people were wounded, with a second woman declared clinically dead from Israeli gunfire as a group of women demonstrated at the entrance to Beit Hanun.

An AFP journalist said that around 400 people, around half of them women, were demonstrating at the western entrance to Beit Hanun in front of Israeli armored vehicles around 300 meters (yards) away.

Two Israeli helicopters flying overhead sporadically fired volleys of gunfire in a bid to scare the protestors into fleeing.

Faced with a growing wave of protesters, the Israeli tanks retreated after about two hours and the men left the mosque, witnesses told Reuters.

<b>Hamas Leader Killed</b>

Before dawn, an Israeli aircraft attacked a vehicle transporting four members of Hamas' armed wing in the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujaiya, according to a medical source and witnesses.

Five people were also wounded in the attack on the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades members, added the medical official.

Witnesses said Omar Mushtaha, a chief of a local unit of the Hamas armed wing was among those killed.

The four men had stopped near a mosque to pray when their vehicle was hit by a missile, witnesses said.

"We will respond vigorously to these assassinations of the sons of Hamas. These assassinations will only make our resistance stronger," said Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida.

A fifth Hamas member was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers at Beit Hanun.

Suheib Aduane, 21, was a bodyguard for the Palestinian government's refugees minister, Hamas member Atef Aduane.

A four-year-old boy, Bara Fayyad, also died from his wounds suffered on Wednesday during the first day of the incursion in Beit Hanun, which has been completely occupied by Israeli troops.

Four other people were also wounded early Friday in an air strike on Jabaliya.

More than 70 people, including three women and 10 children, have been wounded since Israeli forces launched Operation Autumn Clouds early Wednesday, November 1.

Palestinian security sources said around 100 Palestinians had been detained during the operation.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya both condemned the new Israeli offensive, describing it as a "massacre."

On Thursday, Abbas called on Israel's most powerful ally, the United States, to intervene to stop the operation.

Haniya vowed before thousands of supporters of his Hamas movement in Gaza City that Israel's "terrorist and military option" will fail.

The Gaza assault is one of the biggest in the Palestinian territories since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza in June under the pretext of releasing an Israeli soldier taken prisoner by resistance fighters in a cross-border raid.

More than 280 Palestinians have been killed in the four-month-old offensive, about half of them civilians. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed.

Israel theoretically withdrew its army and Jewish settlers from Gaza last year after a 38-year occupation, but continuing Israeli blockade and checkpoint closures turned the tiny Strip into an open-air prison for the Palestinians.

Friday's deaths brings to 5,489 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count. sss