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Palestinian Baby Dies As Pope Prays For Peace
JERUSALEM, May 7 (News Agencies) - A four-month-old baby girl was killed by Israeli shelling Monday as the pope prayed for Middle East peace on the disputed Golan Heights in Syria, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned he would take the war to the Palestinians.
Iman Hajjour was killed by shellfire when Israeli forces struck at the town and refugee camp of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip in "retaliation" for Palestinian mortar attacks on the Jewish settlements of Neve Dekalim and Atzmona.
Her sister was seriously wounded and 20 other people slightly hurt, Palestinian officials said, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) immediately repeated its call for an international protection force.
"After this butchery, we call on the international community to provide international protection to the Palestinian people," said the secretary of the Palestinian presidency, Tayeb Abdel Rahim.
Israeli military spokeswoman Sharon Feingold said the army expressed "deep regrets" for Irma's death, but she said, "The Israeli army has to respond when mortars are fired on innocent civilians. It has the duty of defending Israeli civilians wherever they are."
News of the killing came as Pope John Paul II visited the deserted town of Quneitra in the Syrian Golan Heights, and he departed from his prepared text as he prayed for peace in the ruined Greek Orthodox church of St. George.
"As you know there has been sad news of conflict and of deaths which happen again even today in Gaza; our prayers are even more intense," the pope said.
Earlier, the Israeli army launched a raid into the autonomous Palestinian town of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, following a firefight late Sunday in which one Palestinian - Hussein Khader Abu Tamam, 45 - was killed and some 10 others wounded.
An officer in the Israeli border guards said troops entered an area, which under agreements, is under total Palestinian control and used a bulldozer to destroy a police post, which the Israelis claim Palestinians were using as a firing position.
Israeli forces also staged an incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory at Dar Salah east of Bethlehem in pursuit of a car from which shots had been fired on a patrol, setting off a 20-minute exchange of fire with Palestinian police.
On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said the decision to enter territories under full Palestinian control can now be taken by commanders in the field and no longer requires approval from the upper political echelons.
The raids came as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told parliament Monday that Israel would take the initiative in the fight against "terrorism" and will not restrict itself to reacting to Palestinian attacks.
Later, the Israeli navy announced it had intercepted a ship along the Israeli-Lebanese border which it said was carrying 40 tons of arms, including anti-aircraft missiles, to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The seized arsenal would have enabled the Palestinians to hit more distant targets than those they can reach at present with mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip.
But the Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories denied any links to the arms trafficking.
"The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization do not have any connection with the intercepted boat which was not headed towards the Palestinian coastline," said Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Monday's deaths brought to 514 the number of people killed during the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, which broke out on September 28th. They comprise 425 Palestinians, 75 Israelis, 13 Israeli Arabs and one German.
While Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa deplored "insufficient" involvement of the European Union in peace efforts, the United States criticized both Israelis and Palestinians for the recent escalation of violence in the region that killed the baby girl, and called on both parties to end the fighting.
But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on the Mitchell report on the root causes of the spiraling violence until a final report is released.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said that Egypt, Jordan, the European Union and the U.N. all agree on holding a new summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, requested by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and rejected by Israel, to discuss the findings of the preliminary report.
Meanwhile in Paris, French President Jacques Chirac and Jordan's King Abdullah II said they hoped the new Egyptian-Jordanian plan to re-launch Palestinian-Israeli talks would bring both sides back to the negotiating table.
The plan is aimed at stopping the violence and restarting peace talks through confidence-building measures like stopping the building of Jewish settlements.
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