JENIN, April 5: Twenty-four Palestinians, including six Hamas members eliminated in a single strike, were killed by the Israelis on Friday as the Jewish state’s army ignored calls by US President George Bush for an early pullout.
Heavy fighting raged in two towns as the outgunned Palestinians put up stiff resistance against advancing Israeli tanks.
The six hamas men were killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship destroyed a building where they were holed up in the village of Tubas, north of Nablus.
Among the dead was Kais Idwan, a West Bank leader of the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, which has claimed responsibility for several bloody attacks on Israel.
The Israelis said Idwan was the mastermind behind the March 27 suicide attack in Netanya that left 26 dead.
Idwan was also said to have been on a list of wanted guerillas which Israel had handed to the Palestinian authorities, demanding they be arrested.
Palestinians searched for survivors in the rubble of the toppled building that housed members of Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of Fatah.
Israeli troops had earlier besieged the building and demanded that the guerillas give themselves up.
Two Palestinians were killed, including a 14-year-old girl, by heavy machinegun fire from Israeli tanks as they moved into the village. Israel has killed dozens of Palestinians and their leaders, blaming them for attacks on Israelis.
HEAVY FIGHTING: Heavy fighting raged in two West Bank towns on Friday, with 18 Palestinians dead.
Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said on state television that “Operation Defence Walls” would continue “for the moment”.
Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopters battled to consolidate their hold on the northern West Bank towns of Nablus and Jenin.
In Bethlehem, Israeli forces pressed their siege of the Church of Nativity, where it says several Palestinian guerillas were holed up, while the bodies of seven suspected Israeli collaborators were found nearby.
The Israelis have captured six out of eight major cities or towns after their biggest push in the Palestinian territories.
In Nablus local Palestinian officials and medical authorities said at least seven Palestinians died in pre-dawn clashes with the Israeli army.
Israeli tanks surrounded the old city of Nablus, a mass of winding streets inside the town, but did not penetrate the ancient area as Palestinians battled against Israeli troops moving on its edges.
The Israeli army was not allowing ambulances access to casualties, making it hard to establish a precise toll or identify the dead and wounded.
Officials at Nablus hospitals said a local morgue had been converted to a clinic and that they were seeking international help to cope with the casualties.
The army said in a statement that its forces, which entered Nablus on Wednesday night after invading a string of other West Bank cities, had come under gunfire and bomb attacks in the city. In Jenin, to the north, Israeli combat helicopters fired two rockets at a mosque, setting it ablaze.
Helicopters also pounded a nearby hospital with machineguns during intense fight witnesses said. Two Palestinians were killed at the hospital. In Bethlehem, the Israeli army tried in vain to persuade dozens of Palestinians allegedly hiding in the Church of the Nativity to abandon one of Christianity’s most sacred sites.—Reuters/AFP
