The body of 18-months old Palestinian Alian Bashiti, killed by Israeli army

By Mustafa el-Sawwaf, Yasser Al Banna, IOL Correspondents

GAZA CITY, May 8 (IslamOnline.net) - Israeli occupation forces shot dead three Palestinians early on Thursday, May 8, raising the death toll to seven in the last 24 hours.

A 30-year-old Palestinian was shot down by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis and breathed his last upon arrival to hospital, Palestinian medical sources told IslamOnline.net.

The Israeli soldiers, stationed in the Jewish settlement of Gosh Qatif, attacked the city with machine gunfire. 

Also Thursday, Ayman Huji, 20, died of his injuries sustained on Wednesday, May 7, when an Israeli jeep ran over him along with two others in the northern West Bank.

In a northern street of Gaza City, Israeli Apache helicopter gunships fired more than five rockets at a car driven by a Hamas military leader, Al-Jazzera reported.

"The body of Ayad el-Beik, a member of Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, was cut down when an Apache helicopter swooped on his vehicle in a northern district of Gaza City," the channel's correspondent said on air by the telephone.

Elsewhere, a Palestinian woman critically wounded in the neck when Israeli soldiers fired randomly near Khan Yunis late on April died of her wounds in Gaza City.

Ikram Eqdeh, 27, was shot at by the soldiers stationed near the "Green Line" dividing the Gaza Strip and Jewish settlements as she harvested crops with her daughter. 

The latest deaths raised to 3,216 the number of people killed since the September 2000 launch of the Intifada against Israeli occupation, including 2,424 Palestinians and 730 Israelis, according to an Agence France Presse (AFP) account.

Israeli occupation forces also killed three Palestinians, including a 18-month-old toddler on Wednesday, as the Jewish state further tightened a military blockade on the West Bank and Gaza Strip on the 55^th anniversary of its creation on Palestinian land occupied in 1948.

‘Clashes’

In another related development, Israeli occupation forces traded fire with Palestinian gunmen near a southern Gaza Strip. The clashes were ensued by a fierce shelling of Palestinian houses and farmland nearby.

The Israeli radio said that Palestinian gunmen attacked a number of Israeli posts near the borderline with Egypt with hand grenades.

Gaza Strip security director Abdel-Razeq al-Mujayda, blamed the Israeli government for the escalation of aggression against Palestinians.

Mujayda urged the international community for intervention to stop Israeli attacks against civilians.

Moving south of occupied Jerusalem, a Palestinian girl was taken by Israeli forces to unknown area after attempting to stab an Israeli Border Guard.

Israeli Fire Killed The British Journalist

Meanwhile, an autopsy has found that British television journalist James Miller who died last week in the southern Gaza Strip was shot in the neck by Israeli forces, Israel's public radio reported Thursday.

The autopsy carried out at Abu Khabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv with a British doctor present found that the freelance journalist was hit last Friday, May 2, by an M-16 assault rifle bullet fired by soldiers facing him while filming their demolition of Palestinian houses in southern Gaza Strip, it said.

The journalist, wearing a helmet and bullet-proof vest, was struck in the neck. He was treated on the scene by soldiers before being evacuated by helicopter to an army camp, where he died.

A senior Israeli officer had claimed that Miller could have been shot from behind by Palestinian gunfire.

The Briton was the fourth journalist killed by the Israeli army since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada against occupation.