by Sakher Abu El Oun
GAZA CITY, Sept 9 (AFP) - Four Palestinians, including an 11-year-year-old boy, were killed Thursday as the Israeli army widened a major offensive in the northern Gaza Strip designed to halt rocket attacks by Hamas fighters.
Three, including the youngster, were shot when soldiers opened fire at a group who were throwing stones at them in the Jabalya refugee camp, medical and security sources said.
A fourth, a 24-year-old member of the hardline Islamist movement Hamas' armed wing, was killed earlier in an exchange of fire with soldiers in the camp, medical and security sources said.
A further 25 people were wounded in Jabalya, including 12 injured in an overnight raid by Israeli combat aircraft.
A 15-year-old Palestinian was also killed when he was run over over by an army jeep during a brief incursion into a refugee camp near Ramallah in the West Bank, sources on both sides said.
The latest deaths brought the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian intifada to 4,298, including 3,284 Palestinians and 943 Israelis, according to an AFP count.
The army launched the major operation in the north of Gaza on Wednesday morning amid growing frustration at the continued firing of Qassam rockets, which take their name from the armed wing of Hamas, into southern Israel.
A similar operation, which was wrapped up a month ago after five weeks, was widely deemed a failure as the rocket attacks continued unabated.
Soldiers who had already taken up positions on Wednesday around Jabalya and the nearby town of Beit Lahiya, expanded the offensive on Thursday by pushing several hundred meters (yards) further south of the densely populated area with the help of reinforcements, witnesses and security sources said.
The soldiers destroyed one house and took control of a block of flats during their advance, the sources added.
But even as they widened the operation, another Qassam rocket was fired at southern Israel although it struck harmlessly in the Negev desert, an Israeli military source said.
The flare-up in violence in Gaza began in the early hours of Tueday when an Israeli air strike killed 14 Hamas fighters who were undergoing military training on a football field in the east of the territory.
That strike was Israel's first major response to a double Hamas suicide bombing in the southern Israeli town of Beersheva, which left 16 people dead as well as the two attackers.
Apart from stirring Israel into a renewed drive against Hamas, the Beersheva attacks have also prompted new calls for the expulsion of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who has been accused of a complete failure to crack down on militants.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Israel had never been closer to expelling Arafat from his West Bank headquarters.
"Arafat has no place among us and the day when we take him out of here and send him to others has never been closer," Shalom said in comments broadcast on public radio.
"We are going to maintain our policy of isolating Arafat at the Muqataa (his West Bank headquarters) as he is a terrorist with whom it is impossible to negotiate," added Shalom, who has made a number of previous calls for Arafat's expulsion.
Arafat has been effectively confined to his Ramallah headquarters by the Israeli army since December 2001, having been declared an obstacle to peace by his arch enemy, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Israeli security cabinet agreed in principle on September 11 last year to "remove" Arafat from his headquarters but there has been no attempt to carry out the plan.
In a phone-in programme earlier this week, hawkish Defence Minsiter Shaul Mofaz said Israel was still determined to banish Arafat but only "at the opportune moment and in the method that suits us."