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Israeli Occupation Army Shells PA Offices, Abducts Activist
JERUSALEM, July 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - At least one Palestinian was killed and eight were injured in an Israeli attack on a Palestinian Authority office in the West Bank town of Hebron on
Friday night, news agencies reported.
The deadly Israeli attack on the headquarters of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's self-rule Authority in Hebron marked yet another night of continued Israeli aggressions in the occupied territories, as pressure grew on Israel Saturday to let international observers monitor the deteriorating situation on the ground, the French news agency AFP reported.
The Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub, confirmed that the people in the building were civilians, the BBC online service reported.
Israel denied that the Friday night incident, which killed one Palestinian and wounded eight others, was the result of an Israeli attack.
Ultra-rightist Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office claimed there had been no military activity, while army sources claimed the fatal attack had been a "work accident" - the term the Israeli army uses to describe Palestinian martyr operations, which couldn't have possibly taken place inside a PA office.
The Israeli attack comes in the wake of yet another violent Israeli escalation when Jewish militants shot dead three Palestinians, including a three-month-old baby-boy, and wounded three others - all members of the same family.
The three Palestinians shot dead on Thursday were driving back from a wedding when their vehicle was overtaken by a white car, whose Israeli occupants opened fire, BBC reported.
Israeli security forces were allegedly continuing the hunt for the Jewish militants who perpetrated the attack, AFP reported.
The murder of the Palestinian family was claimed by the Committee for Road Safety, an extremist group linked to the anti-Muslim movement Kach, which is officially outlawed but often tolerated by Israeli authorities, AFP reported.
"This attack could not have taken place without the prior political and security approval of Israel, which has protected the settlers from start to finish," Rajoub told AFP.
Marwan Barghouti, head of Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, said: "This will lead to a widespread response by the Palestinians. I'm afraid if they're not stopped, we are on the verge of a bloodbath."
A leading Kach figure, Noam Federman, was allowed to go free last week after police found a cache of weapons and ammunition in his car, AFP reported.
Another militant Jewish group has placed an inflammatory advertisement in an Israeli newspaper, appealing to readers to do what it called the moral thing, and kill Arafat, BBC online reported.
Meanwhile, Israeli commandos abducted a mid-level member of the resistance Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) overnight Friday outside the West Bank city of Ramallah, AFP reported.
Ahmed Taha was in his car when Israeli special forces pulled in front of the vehicle, forced him out and took him away.
An Israeli army spokesman had no comment about the incident.
Israel carries out such operations under claims of "active self-defense" measures.
According to western figures, nearly 50 people - mostly Palestinians - have been killed since the would-be U.S.-brokered truce was announced mid-June.
Meanwhile, Israel - which has strongly rejected international pressure to accept outside monitors to oversee the situation on the ground - has announced an initial acceptance of monitors, provided they are all CIA officers.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said Friday that Israel would accept U.S. observers only if they were "forced" on Israel, but Prime Minister Sharon's office issued a statement denying any change in the Israeli position.
Foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations on Thursday backed the Palestinian call for international observers, rejected by Israel as an unacceptable "internationalization" of the conflict.
The United States broke with longstanding policy in joining its G8 colleagues to support the call, which would have to be agreed to by both Israel and the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army - in what some Western news agencies called a veiled declaration of war - has announced its plan to open offices in nine cities worldwide to allow faster calling-up of its reserves, an Israeli military spokesman said Saturday, news agencies reported.
The spokesman said the offices would be established in embassies or consulates in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Bombay, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, New York and Paris, but did not say when they would be opened.
"These offices will be responsible for repatriating Israelis who have been living abroad for more than a year or who are traveling while on reserve status," the spokesman said, quoted by AFP.
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