Parents mourn after Middle East bloodshed

A Palestinian boy aged two shot dead in front of his father was buried here yesterday. As they lowered Nafez Mishal into the ground, a few hours' drive away two Israeli children murdered by a suspected Palestinian gunman on Sunday night were also being buried.

The Israeli tanks went back into the West Bank town of Tulkarem, demolishing a militant's home and rounding up a few others in retaliation for the deaths of the Israeli children, Noam and Matan Ohion.

At the same time, the people of Tel al-Sultan refugee camp in Rafah were mourning their child, killed, evidence suggested, by an Israeli bullet. They buried Nafez on a stretcher decorated with balloons. He was the 63rd child to die in Rafah since the start of the intifada, the director of the hospital, Dr Ali Musa, said.

The place where Nafez died on Monday was a wretched stretch of dirty sand, fringed with concrete shanty houses. He was sitting on his father's lap by the side of the road, playing with a balloon. As it started to drift away, Nafez got up to try to catch it.

Nafez's father, Khaled, clearly still in shock, described how he saw his youngest son fall suddenly, blood coming from his side. At the end of the street are the ramparts of sand that mark the border with Egypt. The bullets came from the Israeli army watchtower on the border, Mr Mishal said.

The Israeli army admitted it opened fire from the border post, but said soldiers were returning fire after Palestinian militants shot at them. Everybody we spoke to in Rafah said the army opened fire without provocation

What is beyond dispute is that the Israeli army opened fire into the heart of a residential neighbourhood packed with civilians. Mr Mishal says gunfire from the border posts often comes into Tel al-Sultan refugee camp where he lives. "How can I move?" he says. "I don't have any money to go elsewhere." He is unemployed and lives off UN food handouts.

Three weeks ago, five people died when Israeli soldiers fired into the heart of another refugee camp near the border here. One was an eight-year-old girl, Shaima abu Shamaaleh. Her uncle showed us pictures of her in a hospital bed. A section had been torn away from her face, leaving a red hole. Her eyes were gone.

The uncle, Jihad abu Shamaaleh, witnessed her death. He pointed to the room at the front of the house where the children were playing when the firing started. The walls of the house were pitted with shrapnel holes. Locals say Israelis fired tank shells.

Shaima's father went to fetch her. As Shaima was walking towards his arms, shrapnel flew into her face. "I was standing behind her father," said Mr abu Shamaaleh. "He was wounded in the chest by shrapnel but he managed to pick her up out of there." Doctors could not save her.

One of the four adults killed here, Sa'id Obeid, was torn in half. The Palestinians had pictures of that too, his severed head and torso lying in the middle of the street..

"The army fires at our houses and calls it self-defence, but they call our attacks terrorism," Mr abu Shamaaleh said. Mr Mishal, Nafez's father, put it more simply. "I am against the killing of children," he said.