In the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, an 11-year-old Palestinian girl, Nada Madi, was shot to death while watching a funeral from the window of her home, her cousin Mohammed Madi said. He said she was shot by Israeli occupation soldiers.
Israeli tanks entered the town of Deir al-Balah in Gaza early Friday, surrounding the house of an Islamic Jihad activist. Incursions into Palestinian areas in Gaza take place almost every night, as Israeli forces destroy houses belonging to suspected resistance activists.

In the shooting in Rafah, Palestinian witnesses said Madi, a girl who lived near an Israeli military post, died when Israeli occupation soldiers fired during the funeral of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy killed the day before.

Near the West Bank town of Jenin, an Israeli tank ran into a Palestinian minibus, killing a passenger. Witnesses said it appeared to be an accident, but the driver said the tank hit the vehicle intentionally.
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On Wednesday Israeli occupation troops shot and killed a teenage boy and wounded two others in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. The boys were part of a group pelting rocks and bottles at the occupation soldiers, who were patrolling the border that separates Israel and Gaza.

In the West Bank town of Tulkarem, troops demolished the home of a Palestinian they say carried out an attack last month on an Israeli communal farm in which five people were killed. The alleged gunman remains at large.

In overnight raids throughout the West Bank, troops rounded up more than 20 Palestinians suspected of involvement in attacks on Israelis, the military said.

During Israel's forays into the West Bank in recent months, the occupation army has detained thousands of Palestinians in roundups that government officials say have slowed, but not halted, attacks on Israel.

In Bethlehem, Israeli occupation soldiers seized the camera of an Associated Press Television News journalist who was filming troops at the Church of the Nativity. The occupation soldiers took the tape and returned the camera.

A photographer for the French news agency Agence France-Presse was beaten by Israeli border police at a checkpoint near Nablus on Thursday, the agency said. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based watchdog group, issued a protest.

LABOUR CLOSES GAP ON BACK OF LIKUD CORRUPTION SCANDAL

Israel's Labour party meanwhile clawed a few points back in voter intention on the Likud party, whose popularity appears to have been dented by a corruption scandal, according to an opinion poll published by the left-of-centre Haaretz daily.

Amram Mitzna's party was credited with 23 seats in parliament, while previous surveys predicted Labour would only muster between 19 and 21 seats in the January 28 elections.

Amid the graft scandal involving payoffs from Likud aspirants in return for party central committee votes to include them on its list of parliamentaty candidates, the survey credited Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's party with 35 of the Knesset's 120, down from previous estimates of 40.

But the poll also revealed that 14.7 percent of potential Likud voters might reconsider their choice.

The survey was carried out by the Dialogue Institute on a representaive sample of 522 listed voters and has a margin of error of 4.4 percent.

In another development, the Israeli opposition leader said Thursday he would only allow his Labor Party into a coalition government that accepted his policy of withdrawal from Palestinian territories.

Mitzna leads his party into general elections Jan. 28. He has said that if elected, he will seek a negotiated treaty with the Palestinians, but if a deal is not attainable he will order a unilateral Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

Earlier this week, he had ruled out any alliance with Likud. Sharon says a national unity government is essential as Israel battles a 26-month-old Palestinian uprising and a major economic slump.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian resistance activist shouts anti-Israeli slogans as other mourners carry the body of Palestinian Alah Mesleh, 15, during his funeral procession at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday Dec. 19, 2002. Mesleh was shot and killed during clashes with Israeli forces near the border with Egypt Wednesday. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
- Dec 19 8:52 AM