April 1, 2002	Monday	Muharram 17, 1423

RAMALLAH, March 31: Israel is preventing ambulances from evacuating Palestinians wounded by Israeli gunfire in the streets of Ramallah, an official of the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday.

“We have received more than 20 calls from south Ramallah about dead and wounded in the streets but have been unable to evacuate them,” the organisation’s emergency services chief for the West Bank, Wael Kaddan, said.

“Each time the ambulances have been stopped by soldiers, who have threatened our crews with guns in spite of the coordination between us and the Israeli army,” he said.

Kaddan said that orders to enable relief workers to operate were not being passed on to the troops in the field.

Israel invaded Ramallah on Friday following a suicide bombing in Israel, taking over most of the headquarters compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Western pacifists: A group of about 40 Western pacifists have pledged to stay inside Yasser Arafat’s besieged offices in the West Bank town of Ramallah, to protect the Palestinian leader from Israeli troops, one of the activists said.

The group, including French farm union activist Jose Bove, marched into to the Palestinian leader’s headquarters, defying Israeli tanks and warning shots, said Claude Leostic, one of the people in the group said.

About 100 European activists and a small number of US nationals are in Ramallah to express their solidarity with Arafat and the Palestinian people, including Bove, who became known for being involved in smashing up a McDonald’s restaurant in southern France in 1999.

Four of the activists met with Arafat on Saturday, and said he was determined “to continue the resistance.”—AFP