Stranded Gazans go home as Israel opens Egypt border

Israel's army reopened the border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip yesterday, allowing 1,500 Palestinians to head home after being stranded on the Egyptian side for three weeks.

Small children and elderly people were among travellers languishing in desert heat and unsanitary conditions in the Rafah terminal. Washington, Israel's close ally, had expressed concern about the Palestinians' plight.

Busloads of exhausted travellers entered Gaza and were expected to be followed by a further 2,000 Palestinians waiting at hotels in Egypt's northern Sinai region, officials said.

"I hope this international passage will remain open and that Israel will not repeat such inhumane measures that created this miserable situation," Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel had shut the crossing - one of many such clampdowns imposed during an almost four-year-old Palestinian revolt - on July 18, saying intelligence indicated militants wanted to blow up the terminal from a tunnel to be burrowed underneath.

It is in a dusty area, blazing hot in summer, where Israeli forces regularly play a bloody cat-and-mouse game with militants who dig tunnels to smuggle munitions into Gaza.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian gunman during an arrest operation in the town of Salfit, an army spokesman said. A Palestinian security source said the man was a Hamas militant.

In the Gaza Strip, soldiers shot dead an 18-year-old Islamic Jihad militant in southern Gaza. The army said he was spotted trying to infiltrate a settlement while carrying an explosive device.

Israel occupied Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war and has controlled its borders since then. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 but keep the poor, overcrowded territory encircled afterwards.

The Rafah crossing, the sole exit for Gaza's 1.3 million Palestinians, was back in operation a day after White House envoy Elliot Abrams had talks with Sharon in Jerusalem.

Israel's reopening of the crossing was one of a series of new steps that could ease regional tensions, including its decision on Thursday to let some Palestinian police bear arms in the West Bank for the first time in three years.

Israel had banned the police from carrying weapons in 2001, charging that they were involved in violence that marked the Palestinian uprising.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said he had now agreed to let some police carry handguns to help end unprecedented unrest and lawlessness in Palestinian territories.