29 January 2004	Thursday	06 Zilhaj 1424

GAZA, Jan 28: Israeli soldiers shot dead eight Palestinians when tanks raided the edge of Gaza City on Wednesday. The Islamic Jihad said five of its fighters were killed in the deadliest Israeli raid in Gaza for one month.

An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers had launched a raid to rout militants who frequently shoot mortars at the neighbouring Jewish settlement of Netzarim. He said troops fired at a group of men and believed they had killed some.

"The bloody message has been received...and the Palestinian people will know how to respond to it," said Mohammed al Hindi, a leader of the Islamic Jihad. The attack came amid a new push for negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians by envoys from Egypt and the United States.

Witnesses said Palestinians traded fire with Israeli troops when tanks and armoured bulldozers moved out of Netzarim, a frequent flashpoint during the intifada. The military vehicles headed towards Gaza City.

The Israeli spokesman said there were heavy exchanges of fire in Zaitoun but no ambulance had been targeted. He said that the raid was a limited measure and that only one tank and one bulldozer had moved towards the Palestinian areas.

ISRAELI SOLDIER: An Israeli soldier was slightly injured on Wednesday by Palestinian gunfire in an attack east of the West Bank town of Jenin, according to Israeli military sources.

The incident took place on the outskirts of the settlement of Kadim, in the northern West Bank, the sources added. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the shooting.

PALESTINIAN POLICE: Palestinian policemen, uniformed but unarmed, began on Wednesday to be deployed in West Bank towns where they had all but disappeared since the start of large-scale Israeli army incursions in 2001.

Dozens of officers, wearing dark blue uniforms, were patrolling the streets of Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, Qalqilya in the northern West Bank as well as in the southern city of Al Khalil.

The deployments came the day after an unannounced meeting of senior Palestinian security officials and Israeli army representatives, according to a Palestinian security source.

During the meeting, the Israeli side pledged not to impede their work and promised to respond within a week to a Palestinian demand to permit police to bear arms, the source added.

"The Palestinian police have been deployed today to assume their responsibilities for the maintenance of law and order and the protection of the welfare of citizens," prime minister Ahmed Qorei told reporters here after talks with US envoys John Wolf and David Satterfield.

"The citizens are very happy and the Americans have praised this measure which they have described as very important. From what I have heard, the Israelis are not against this measure."

Police began disappearing from West Bank towns which had been under the control of the Palestinian Authority in 2001 as Israel staged a series of major incursions at the height of the intifada.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei had announced on Monday a series of reforms designed to improve the security situation in the Palestinian territories. Among the reforms announced was plans to create two special "coordination centres" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip designed to increase the exchange of information between the various security branches.

The Palestinian Authority has around a dozen separate security services, something regularly criticised by Western donors. Attempts by Mr Qorei's predecessor, Mahmud Abbas, to prise away control of the security services from Yasser Arafat played a major part in his downfall last year. -AFP