Wednesday, August 17 2005 10:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Eshkol (Israel): As the deadline approaches for voluntary evacuation, a senior disengagement officer has said that nearly half of the Gaza Strip settlers have left on their own and the remaining will be expelled by force.

"This plan is going as scheduled. Close to 50 per cent of the residents have left," senior disengagement official, Eival Giladi, a Reserve Brigadier General and Chief of coordination and strategy for the Prime Minister's Office, told reporters.

The remaining will be evacuated with force, Giladi said. "I would say that in a few days, there will be no settlers or infiltrators left in Gaza," he asserted.

The deadline for the residents of the Gaza settlements to leave of their own free will or face being evacuated by force is to expire at around 0230 IST.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police have entered the Jewish settlements.

The military thronged the main road leading from the gates of Gaza's largest settlement Neve Dekalim soon after the general in charge of the pullout operations, General Dan Herel announced that the operation to expel settlers from the area would start 'this minute.'

Harel told reporters that the army would also head to other Gaza settlements without specifying which ones and expressed hope that the pullout would be non-violent.

"In the next few hours we will go to the houses of the settlers in Neve Dekalim and we will demand that they go. It's the start of the forced evacuation but we will not use violence," he said.

Harel also said that the army had been working with the Palestinian Authority and the 'cooperation is very good'.

Earlier, security forces detained 50 Israelis for clashing with police and soldiers attempting to help Gaza settlers leave before the deadline for voluntary evacuation.

Scuffles broke out between security forces and opponents of Israel's Gaza pullout who were trying to block moving trucks from entering, Neve Dekalim.

Several people were arrested in the scuffles during which bins were set alight and the security forces had to use water cannons to break through the crowds.

Before Harel's announcement, hundreds of young opponents of Prime Minister's Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan took refuge in three of the settlement's synagogues and laid their beds for the night.

In another show of defiance, hundreds of residents participated in the inauguration of a newly built nikva or ritual bath where men and women came for purification.

On the Palestinian side, marchers have been celebrating the pullout.

All 8,500 residents of Gaza settlements are to be evacuated along with four of 120 settlements in the West Bank under the plan.