Baby girl dies in Israeli shelling

JERUSALEM, (AFP) - Two Palestinians, including a four-month old baby girl, were killed by shelling Monday, as Israel stepped up its action in response to attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Iman Hajjour was killed by shell-fire when Israeli forces struck at the town and refugee camp of Khan Yunes in the southern Gaza Strip in retaliation for Palestinian mortar attacks on Jewish settlements.

Her sister, Suzanne, 19, was seriously wounded and 20 other people slightly hurt, Palestinian officials said, while the Palestinian Authority immediately repeated its call for an international protection force.

"After this butchery, we call on the international community to provide international protection to the Palestinian people," said the secretary of the Palestinian presidency, Tayeb Abdel Rahim.

Earlier the Israeli army launched a raid into the autonomous Palestinian town of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, following a firefight in which one Palestinian -- Hussein Khader Abu Tamam, 45 -- was killed and some 10 others wounded.

An officer in the Israeli border guards said troops entered an area which under agreements is under total Palestinian control and used a bulldozer to destroy a police post which the Palestinians were using as a firing position.

Israeli forces also staged a brief incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory at Dar Salah east of Bethlehem in pursuit of a car from which shots had been fired on a patrol, setting off a 20-minute exchange of fire with Palestinian police.

The raids came a day after Israel seized Palestinian-controlled territory in the town of Beit Jala for several hours to flush out gunmen who had been attacking Israeli targets, and analysts said they represented part of a new get-tough policy by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"The government is trying to signal that it is doing things differently or more aggressively than the previous government did, because it has to ward off the criticism that it promised something it hasn't delivered," Jaffe Center military expert Mark Heller said.

Monday's deaths brought to 513 the number of people killed as a direct result of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation, which broke out on September 28.

They comprise 424 Palestinians, 75 Israelis, 13 Israeli Arabs and one German.