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by Christian/Base21 Media Activist
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In its deepest thrust into Gaza in more than two years, the Israeli occupation army on Sunday attacked Palestinian homes, businesses and factories in the heart of Gaza-city, killing at least 12 Palestinians and injuring as many as 68 others including many children.

Palestinian medical sources said most of the victims were innocent civilians killed in intensive aerial bombardment of their neighborhoods.

Eyewitnesses said thousands of Israeli soldiers, backed by more than a hundred battle tanks and attack helicopters, thrust into the heart of Gaza-City Saturday night amid artillery and aerial bombardment.

The bloody operation was still continuing by dawn Sunday as Israeli tanks were moving northward toward Beit Hanon, a northern Gaza town.

Some lightly-armed Palestinian resistance fighters sought to put up a resistance to the huge Israeli force.

However, the light rifles used by Palestinian fighters proved no match for the huge fire power of the Israeli tanks and apache helicopter gunships.

The invading forces destroyed dozens of homes and business, including one of the largest factories in the Gaza Strip which manufactures garbage containers. Moreover, several foundries and metal workshops were also destroyed and dynamited.

Palestinians stress the purpose of the wanton destruction of their businesses is to further weaken the already moribund Palestinian economy and impoverish as many additional Palestinian families as possible.

Abdullah al Shami, a prominent leader of the resistance in the Gaza Strip, described the Israeli rampage as "Nazi in character."

"This Zionist-Nazi regime is seeking to murder all Palestinians. They are after our very existence and survival as a people."

Al-Shami argued that the Palestinians had no other choice except resistance.

"We only have our bodies and our blood to give."

Abdul Aziz Rantisi, another leader of resistance, said Palestinians guerilla will retaliate harshly for "this massacre."

"We will avenge these innocent victims very soon.."

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army destroyed much of the infrastructure, including roads and bridges, in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun.

Palestinian sources spoke of the town being completely isolated from the rest of the Gaza Strip after Israeli bulldozers dug deep trenches across the main roads linking it with Gaza City.

Some sources reported that the Israeli army was erecting fences of barbed wire around the town in manners reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps.

The Israeli army said the latest rampage, which comes only two days before the Israeli general elections, was in retaliation for the killing of three Israeli soldiers in gun battle with Palestinian
guerillas near al-Khalil Thursday.

For their part, the Palestinians insist they are obliged to resist a sinister and Nazi-like military occupation that denies them their most fundamental human and civil rights and actually seeks to extirpate them from their ancestral homeland.