Christmas was coming, and her five children would soon be cutting wild flowers to decorate their sparse living-room. Moments later the dusty-kneed seven-year-old bounced in and flopped into an armchair "My boy," beamed Florence with undisguised love. They want to destroy our homes to make a buffer zone between the Egyptian border and Rafah."An army spokesman said they had found and demolished 40 tunnels since the beginning of 2003. Yesterday they unearthed a tunnel 13m (42ft) below ground, much deeper than usual.The entrance was under a residential building. The spokesman said: "When the tunnel is blown up, the house that is hiding it will be blown up with it."Yesterday's raid was launched a few hours after two Israeli officers were killed in an exchange of fire elsewhere in the Gaza Strip. They were the first Israeli fatalities in a month.Sarit Weissman, the sister of one of them, said that there was no reason for Israeli soldiers to be risking their lives to defend Jewish settlers. It was up to them, she told army radio, to defend themselves."My brother was killed for nothing. If the settlers want to be there, too bad."Her lament reflected growing resentment among Israelis at what they see as a war dictated by the settler minority.

In one isolated Gaza village, Netzarim, as many as 1,000 troops guard 50 families.Earlier this week, 13 reserve officers and men in Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli SAS, signed a letter refusing to serve in the occupied territories. They wrote that they did not want to be a party to a "regime of oppression" or the "violation of the human rights of millions of Palestinians".. Bernard was out picking mangoes, said Florence, his mother, smiling He would be in soon. What does the Israeli army want from us?"There are no tunnels here. Muneer Abdel A'al, who left with 16 members of his extended family, said: "We heard shooting, heavy bombardments."The children started crying. We couldn't run into the street because the tanks were firing there.

I took a hammer and made an opening to our neighbour's house."We jumped out of a window We tried to go one way, but the army shot at us We are now sitting in the street. You can hear the children crying."Mr Abdel A'al, 27, who sells food in a refugee school, said: "This is war I saw bodies I saw body parts I saw tanks with cannons. Heavy fighting continued throughout the day. About 40 tanks and other armoured vehicles entered the camp, the scene of repeated clashes in recent weeks, before dawn to destroy tunnels Israel says are used for smuggling weapons to Palestinian militias.The force met heavy resistance from militants with automatic weapons andgrenades. The Israelis, who had suffered no casualties by nightfall, claimed that all eight of the dead were gunmen.But the Palestinians said that three were civilians.