Israeli troops pushed through burning barricades and dragged screaming protesters from a synagogue today in an assault on one of the last pockets of resistance to evacuation from Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Militant settlers took to rooftops in the tiny Gadid enclave shouting "Nazis" as security forces swept in, hours after clearing the main strongholds of defiance in a territory occupied for 38 years by the Israelis.
Dozens of people removed from Gadid later escaped from a bus taking them to Israel and fled into the Israeli-controlled Palestinian enclave of al-Muwasi in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers launched a search to round them up.
Buoyed by the latest poll confirming solid support in Israel for the first removal of settlements from land Palestinians want for a state, the military formally declared Gadid empty before the start of the Jewish Sabbath at sundown.
The army suspended settlement removal for the Jewish rest day, which ends tomorrow evening.
More than 80 per cent of Gaza's 8,500 settlers have been evacuated under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan", and officials said they were far ahead of schedule.
With 17 of Gaza's 21 enclaves clear of settlers, troops plan to begin evacuating two small West Bank settlements on Tuesday in a 24-hour operation, a security source said. That would complete removal of all 9,000 settlers under the plan.
But Sanur and Homesh, built on territory where many religious Jews feel an even closer biblical bond than in Gaza, are seen as potential flashpoints because of an influx of rightist Israelis from the most radical West Bank settlements.
Evacuation forces were expected to begin massing over the weekend in the northern West Bank, where two other mostly secular enclaves have already emptied out voluntarily.