Nine shot dead in Gaza, West Bank: Israel withdraws troops from Jenin
TEL AVIV, April 19: Bloodshed across the West Bank and Gaza Strip left 10 Palestinians dead _ nine shot by Israeli troops and the tenth a suicide bomber, with an Israeli pullout from Jenin failing to ease tensions.
The burst of killings began on Thursday night, some 24 hours after US Secretary of State Colin Powell left the region after failing to win a ceasefire and as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for an armed multinational force to help end the bloodshed.
As the Israeli army withdrew from Jenin, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the three-week-old offensive, it made fresh incursions elsewhere.
Three Palestinian men were killed when Israeli tanks and troops entered the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah.
Two of them were said to be unarmed civilians. One was shot twice in the head and the other shot four times. It was not known if the third victim was armed.
The incursion was confirmed by an Israeli military source who said a military unit opened fire after coming under grenade and automatic weapon fire.
In Ramallah, where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been besieged in his headquarters since March 29, a young boy and a teenager were killed by Israeli fire, the head of the city’s hospital said.
Nine-year-old Mahmoud Abu Hadra was shot in the abdomen in the suburb of Beitunya on Thursday evening.
Ramallah resident Yussef Abusamra said the teenager was killed when several Palestinians defied the curfew and went out on the streets to buy bread.
A Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance arrived soon after the shooting but for 10 minutes the army prevented the crew from attending to the teenager, he said.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian bomber blew himself up near an Israeli checkpoint at the entrance to the Jewish settlement of Gush Katif, in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said. Two soldiers were injured.
Following the attack, Israeli troops blocked off the main north-south road through the Gaza Strip, witnesses said.
ROADBLOCKS COST LIFE: A Palestinian photographer said on Friday his new-born daughter had died because delays at Israeli army checkpoints had prevented him from getting her to a Nablus hospital in time to save her.
“I have lost my only baby — whom I called Dunya, Arabic for life — because of these damned roadblocks,” Nasser Shtayyeh, 32, who covers Nablus for The Associated Press, said.
He said he had tried to get the five-day-old infant to hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus from the family home in the village of Salem, about five kilometres away.
“Dunya had breathing problems because she was born prematurely. She was in urgent need of oxygen, but we lost her after spending more than three hours at the roadblocks for a trip that in normal conditions takes only minutes,” he said.
“The Israeli army is fully responsible for this,” he added.
POLICEMEN BURIED: Tens of thousands of Palestinians marched in funerals across the Gaza Strip on Friday for nine policemen, six of whom were killed in Israel’s offensive in the West Bank.
Twenty policemen from the Mediterranean strip have been killed in the Israeli army’s three-week-old reoccupation of West Bank towns and refugee camps.
“The blood of those martyrs proves the integrity of the Palestinian people, the unity of blood,” a preacher in Gaza said in a speech before Friday prayers.
“Gaza has given its share in the battle of honour, in the fight to defend the West Bank.”
Hundreds of Gaza policemen serving in Palestinian self-ruled areas of the West Bank were trapped by Israeli army closures after Palestinians launched an uprising for statehood in Sept 2000 when talks on a permanent peace deal stalled.
Those policemen were denied permission to return home even for brief visits, but the bodies of dozens killed since the uprising began have been granted passage across Israel into Gaza.
Women wept and others ululated as the latest bodies came home for a final farewell.
“We had been speaking on the phone. He was telling me scary stories about Israeli crimes in Nablus (in the West Bank),” said Mohammad, a relative of dead policeman Rebhi al-Lolo.—Reuters/AFP
TEL AVIV, April 19: Bloodshed across the West Bank and Gaza Strip left 10 Palestinians dead _ nine shot by Israeli troops and the tenth a suicide bomber, with an Israeli pullout from Jenin failing to ease tensions.
