"It was extremely frightening… it's simply not acceptable," Irranca-Davies said

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, June 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Three British lawmakers on Saturday, June 19, accused Israeli troops of firing at them twice during a UN-supervised fact-finding mission in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah a day earlier.

The cross-party group, including MPs Huw Irranca-Davies from the ruling Labour party, Crispin Blunt from the opposition Conservatives and the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Northover, was on a visit to Rafah, where UK student Tom Hurndall was killed, reported the BBC News Online.

"I thought 'they're trying to kill us'," Northover told the broadcaster.

"Our UN companions later said that if they had wanted to kill us they would have, but it was certainly our group they were targeting and seeking to scare. We were the only adults around.

"One of the most perturbing things was that we had been surrounded by children as we arrived, but they were not terrified by this - it's obviously a fairly common occurrence," she added.

In an earlier statement Lady Northover, the Liberal Democrats' international development spokesperson in the Lords, said the incident had shown her "the indiscriminate violence faced by Palestinians on a daily basis".

Irranca-Davies said the first he knew of what was happening was when he heard the rattle of a machine gun.

"We withdrew to the jeeps and as we were getting in, it was followed by some pretty accurate warning shots which fired above our heads and hit a building. It was a pretty clear indication they didn't want us there.

"It was extremely frightening.

"I will be taking it up with Jack Straw and the Foreign Office because it's simply not acceptable," he added.

A spokesman for the British Consulate told Agence France-Presse (AFP) they will take this incident up with the Israeli authorities."

He said the Israeli authorities were well aware that the cross-party group was on a working visit to Rafah, which was the scene of the bloodiest of its Israeli military offensive in year.

The operation claimed the lives of up to 62 Palestinians, flattened 155 homes and drove some 2000 residents homeless.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) launched Monday, May 31, a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign to help hundreds of families made homeless by the Israeli army's mass campaign of house demolitions in Rafah.

It estimated that from 18 May through 24 "a total of 167 buildings  in the Tel Sultan, Brazil and Salam quarters of Rafah were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. These buildings housed 379 families or 2,066 individuals.

The international human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, had dismissed the Israeli operations as "war crimes".

Denial

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army but a foreign ministry spokeswoman said the incident was being checked.

She claimed the Israeli authorities "were not aware that these British MPs were in Rafah" and that the visit "wasn't officially coordinated through us."

"We have spoken with the British embassy and are checking with the army what actually happened," spokeswoman told AFP.

Hurndall, a 22-year-old British activist, died last January after sustaining critical head injuries from a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier in Rafah in April 2003 as he was trying to pull Palestinian children out of danger.

On November 22, Israeli occupation forces gunned down Ian Hook , a British U.N. worker in Jenin refugee camp.

On August 1, Israeli occupation forces fired tear gas grenades and rubber bullets, at more than 1,000 Palestinians and foreign peace activists who were demonstrating against the Israeli construction of a separation wall in the occupied West Bank , wounding 11 people .

In May 2003, a British television cameraman James Miller, 34, was shot and killed by Israeli troops in the Rafah area.