Israeli death toll in Gaza attack rises to 6
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-01-14 13:37

The Israeli death toll in a Palestinian attack in central Gaza has risen to six, the Israeli army said on Friday.

In the attack that occurred late on Thursday night, militants detonated a large bomb at the Karni crossing at the Israel-Gaza border and then infiltrated the terminal, the army said.

A wounded man is brought by ambulance attendants to a hospital in the southern Israel city of Beersheva January 13, 2005. Six people were killed when Palestinians mounted an attack near an Israeli army base in Gaza on Thursday, witnesses and radio stations said, hours after the Palestinians' new leader called for an end to violence. In the biggest such attack since the election of moderate Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president on Sunday, a huge bomb went off outside the Karni crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Israeli radio said. [Reuters]

Three militants were killed in an ensuing gunbattle, the army said. Six Israelis died, all of them civilians, the army said.

Earlier the Israeli military had said that five Israelis were killed. Another body was found later, a spokeswoman said.

The Israeli military had also said that the blast at the terminal was caused by a truck bomb.

Israeli ambulances line up at the Gaza strip's Karni Crossing January 13, 2005 after a bomb attack. [Reuters]

But on Friday a spokeswoman said that a subsequent investigation showed that the militants had planted a large bomb at a door separating the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the terminal, blowing it open, then infiltrated inside where they died in a gunbattle.

Three Palestinian groups, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committee claimed responsibility for the attack.

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