March 31, 2002	Sunday	Muharram 16, 1423

RAMALLAH, March 30: Only a door separated Israeli soldiers from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s private office on Saturday after a night of continuous shelling and shooting around his headquarters, aides said.

Outside, Palestinians fought pitched battles with Israelis on the streets of Ramallah and several other towns.

Palestinians said Israeli soldiers had shot dead five Palestinian policemen “in cold blood” in Ramallah.

Arafat spent the night in darkness after Israeli troops besieging his West Bank compound cut off the electricity and telephone and conditions there were steadily worsening, they said.

The aides said Israeli troops have been gradually tightening their siege around Arafat and a handful of close aides inside the 70-year-old Al Moqataa district compound in Ramallah.

Arafat, accustomed to close brushes with death during his long career as a guerilla leader and statesman, remained defiant and in high spirits.

“They want me a prisoner, dead, a fugitive. I say (rather) a martyr,” Arafat’s defiant voice rang in one interview to Al Jazeera television, rebroadcast on Palestine television operating from Gaza.

Tawfiq al-Tirawi, head of Palestinian intelligence in the West Bank, said Israeli special forces moved closer to Arafat’s private office when they shot their way through into the operations room of Arafat’s bodyguards, injuring two.

“We didn’t only spend the night under siege but also under continuous shelling and shooting,” said Tirawi, among a handful of aides around Arafat.

“They want us to be cut from the outside world regarding telephone connections and all other communications,” he said.

Asked how Arafat spent the night, he said: “Like the rest of our people. There is no electricity and no water, like the rest of our people.”

“This situation has been imposed on us and we can only be steadfast.”

Palestinian minister Hassan Asfour said: “They have cut off everything (from Arafat) except his will.”

Tirawi and other Arafat aides said the situation was growing worse by the hour, as the beleaguered staff drew on their small food and water supplies and as cellular telephone batteries grew weaker with no chance of recharging them.

“The situation is terrible. There is no water or electricity,” one Arafat aide said in a brief telephone conversation, cut short by attempts to conserve resources.

One source said Arafat’s closest aides have covered walls with slogans to boost morale. “They will not pass,” read one slogan written in large Arabic letters on Arafat’s door, quoting from one of Arafat’s famous speeches during a previous siege in Lebanon.

Palestinians following the situation inside the compound said Arafat and his aides were not likely to be able to hold out for long without electricity, water, food or medical supplies.

At least one of Arafat’s bodyguards was killed and more than 20 others injured on Friday when they used personal weapons to try to stop the advancing Israeli soldiers.

Arafat aides said the Palestinian president had personally been helping his private doctor treat wounded bodyguards.

They said an attempt to evacuate the wounded to hospital was cut short after Israeli soldiers arrested some of them from ambulances.

PITCHED BATTLES: Israeli troops fought pitched street battles with Palestinians and rounded up hundreds of men on Saturday.

More than 10 tanks also surrounded the top Palestinian security official in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub, in his headquarters just outside of Ramallah, a Palestinian official said.

Heavy machinegun fire echoed through the mostly deserted streets of Ramallah as Israeli soldiers fought with Palestinian security forces barricaded in office buildings.

Elsewhere, an Israeli border guard and two Palestinians were killed in a clash on the Israeli side of the border with the West Bank. One Palestinian was shot dead and the other blown up by a bomb in his car.

Israeli forces took over the Ramallah office of the Voice of Palestine radio station.

The army rounded up hundreds of men, going from neighbourhood to neighbourhood and demanding by loudspeaker in Arabic that all males 16 to 50 years old surrender.

They were gathered in schools, questioned and their names checked against lists of the wanted. —Reuters/AFP