GAZA STRIP Israeli raid kills 9, damages camp

The deaths were part of a string of violence.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israeli forces looking for weapons-smuggling tunnels withdrew from a Gaza refugee camp this morning, leaving behind damaged water and power systems and piles of rubble from demolished houses.
Nine Palestinians were killed in clashes during the raid, which began Tuesday morning, and more than 40 were wounded. No Israeli soldiers were killed or wounded.
The deaths were part of a string of violent episodes that came despite new efforts to restart stalled peace talks and arrange a long-anticipated summit between the Israeli and Palestinian premiers.
Bystander killed
In a village near the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers searching for militants Tuesday shot and killed a bystander, Palestinians said. The military said soldiers opened fire when they spotted a man preparing to throw a firebomb at them.
In northern Gaza late Tuesday, two Israeli civilians were wounded, one seriously, by a Palestinian rocket, the military said. Palestinians often fire homemade mortars and rockets at the settlements, but casualties are rare.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops arrested Hamas militants suspected of involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis and planning to kidnap soldiers, decapitate them and try to trade their bodies for imprisoned Palestinians, a government statement said. Palestinians said more than 20 Hamas activists were detained.
About 40 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles entered the Rafah refugee camp on the Gaza-Egypt border on Tuesday morning, witnesses said.
Eight Palestinians -- three civilians and five militants -- were killed Tuesday, and a ninth was killed this morning in the fighting, hospital officials said.
The refugee camp is split in two by the Egyptian border, and Israel charges that Palestinians often smuggle weapons into Gaza using makeshift tunnels.
Egypt has denied that the tunnels originate on its side of the border.
The Israeli military said soldiers discovered a tunnel, 56 feet deep and 800 yards long, used for smuggling weapons under the border. The entrance was inside a house in the refugee camp, the military said. Soldiers blew up the tunnel before withdrawing from the camp today.
"The discovery of this tunnel inside a residential building is further evidence of the cynical use by the terror organizations of civilians, further endangering them," the Israeli army said in a prepared statement.