Israeli troops pulled out of a key neighbourhood of Gaza?s Rafah refugee camp yesterday after killing 42 Palestinians in a six-day siege that was roundly condemned by the international community.

Residents of Rafah?s Tel Sultan district ventured onto the streets as Israeli tanks rumbled out of the area. Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, pledged to put a revised plan to evacuate Jewish settlements in Gaza to a cabinet vote by next week. Egypt?s Intelligence Chief, Omar Suleiman, hold talks with Palestinians yesterday about Sharon?s plan.

An Israeli military source said the pullout was part of a ?new deployment? to ?ease conditions? and allow residents to leave their homes to stock up on food, water and medicine. ?It looks like an earthquake hit the neighbourhood,? said resident Sami Fuja. ?The roads are completely torn up, thousands of greenhouses were razed and many houses damaged.?

But Israeli troops remained in at least one other Rafah stronghold, known as the Brazil camp, where besieged residents reported a severe water shortage.

Yousef al-Nala, father of six, had only one bottle of water left. ?Whenever one of the children says he wants water, I dribble a few drops into his mouth,? said al-Nala. Television footage of Palestinian refugees picking through the rubble of some 35 demolished homes in Rafah sparked a world outcry and even a row inside Sharon?s cabinet. Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, touched a raw nerve by saying the sight of an elderly Palestinian woman searching through the rubble of her home reminded him of his grandmother who died in a Nazi death camp. He urged the cabinet to halt the demolitions and said further wreckage could force his centrist party to reconsider its participation in Sharon?s government.

Sharon said he was determined to push through a step-by-step plan to withdraw from Gaza and several West Bank Jewish settlements despite his right-wing Likud party?s rejection of the pullout in a May 2 referendum.

A senior official said Sharon would present an amended plan to evacuate the 7,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza in stages at the next cabinet meeting scheduled for May 30.

A senior aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told Israel Radio the Palestinians ?would be glad? to see Israel leave Gaza but only as part of a wider withdrawal from occupied land coordinated with the Palestinian Authority.

<B>Nidal al-Mughrabi</B>