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Ten
Killed In A Shooting Attack In Northern Israel
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| Palestinian
casualties in a Gaza Strip morgue
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KIRYAT
SHMONA, March 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Ten people were
killed Tuesday in a shooting attack in northern Israel near the
Lebanese border, including three Palestinians and seven Israelis,
military sources said, news agencies reported.
Shooting
continued as a gunman traded fire with soldiers and police who had
sealed off the perimeter of the town of Shlomi, near where three
gunmen had taken position on a hill and opened fire on traffic
below, the sources added.
At
least 23 Palestinians civilians were killed by Israeli occupation
forces in Jabalya refugee camp in a causeless brutal aggression by
Israel. This comes at a time the whole world is waiting for a beam
of light ahead of U.S. envoy, Antony Zinni's visit to the Middle
East.
Israeli
tanks and occupation troops stormed into a Gaza Strip refugee camp
late Monday and killed at least 23 Palestinian civilians after
facing fierce resistance, Palestinian sources said.
Most
of the casualties occurred as 20 Israeli tanks supported by
helicopter gunships roared into northern Gaza late Monday,
exchanging heavy fire with Palestinian security forces on the edge
of the Jabalya refugee camp.
Eyewitnesses
said that the Palestinians refused the orders of the Israeli
occupation soldiers who called on them through loudspeakers to leave
their houses and gather in the refugee courtyard.
Intense
firefights erupted as nearly 70 tanks stormed Jabalya town and the
refugee camp, sending scores of panicked local residents out of the
area on car and foot.
Hospital
sources said earlier at first estimation that 17 people were killed
and 50 others wounded 10 of them critically, as the Gaza Strip
battle continued into the night, they said.
Israeli
soldiers at the edge of the refugee camp, which is the largest in
the Palestinian territories with some 100,000 residents, faced
"strong resistance" as both sides exchanged hails of
bullets, they said. A Palestinian security source said "most of
the deaths were from tank shells."
Israeli
occupation forces withdrew several hours later, but not before
dynamiting a house belonging to a member of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) group and destroying two metal
workshops, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Chief
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat accused Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon of being responsible for the "bloodbath".
"These attacks are a bloodbath and a continuation of the
carnage and war crimes committed by the Sharon government in the
refugee camps,"
At
about the same time as the Jabalya raid, Israeli helicopter gunships
blasted buildings of Arafat's elite Force 17 guards and the
Palestinian navy in the Deir al-Balah area of the central Gaza
Strip, killing a member of the security forces, security sources
said.
Israeli
helicopter gunships also launched an assault on the Al Amhari
refugee camp, near Ramallah in the West Bank, as army tanks massed
at the main entrance to the camp, witnesses said.
That
attack also sparked an exchange and there were no immediate reports
of casualties, although an AFP reporter at the scene said Israeli
soldiers fired on journalists leaving a hotel near Ramallah.
Palestinian
official news agency WAFA also reported that in a part of its
large-scale and unprecedented campaign of aggression against the
Palestinian people, Israeli occupation troops backed by at least 50
tanks, armored vehicles and bulldozers covered by helicopter
gunships thrust into Qalqilya City, killing at least two and
wounding dozens others.
The
occupation soldiers backed by tanks entered the city from all sides,
attacking and destroying the headquarters of the Force 17, residents
told WAFA. A Palestinian security officer and a civilian were
killed, hospital officials said.
In
the central Gaza Strip, troops backed by tanks entered the
El-Boureij refugee camp, seizing a Palestinian security building and
firing against Palestinian security forces. One Palestinian civilian
was killed and five wounded hospital officials said.
The
Israeli occupation bulldozers uprooted nearby olive and citrus
groves, residents said. The occupation forces on Monday entered the
Azza refugee camp in Bethlehem and continued their brutal crimes
against two other camps in the Aida and Deheishe refugee camps in
the Bethlehem area.
Meanwhile,
the Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the violent Israeli
air strike against the Presidential Headquarters in Gaza City on
Sunday, calling it "an aggression against our national
sovereignty" and “a grave breach of all the red lines".
In
a statement issued following the aggression, the Palestinian
leadership asserted, "Israel is delusional if it is building
its hopes on the illusion that this aggressive war against our
people could deter it and its leadership from continuing the battle
of steadfastness against [Israeli] occupation aggression, and
settlement activity, as well as war crimes against our civilians in
the cities, towns, and refugee camps.”
Meanwhile,
the Israeli army occupied most of the West Bank city of Ramallah,
capital of the Palestinian Authority, Tuesday March 12, 2002, in its
biggest operation of the intifada.
Palestinian
security sources said two Palestinians were killed as some 100 tanks
and armored vehicles moved into the city, pushing close to
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office in the center. The army
also surrounded the Al-Amhari and El-Kadora refugee camps on the
outskirts of Ramallah. A spokesman said it was the biggest military
operation since the outbreak of Al-Aqsa uprising, or intifada, at
the end of September 2000.
It
came only the day after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said
Arafat, who had been confined to Ramallah for some three months by
an Israeli blockade, was free to move around the Palestinian
territories. Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo
immediately condemned the incursion. "The Israeli army is
occupying the Palestinian Authority's capital, and that signifies
that Ariel Sharon wants to occupy all the Palestinian
territories," he told AFP.
Marwan
Barghuti, who heads Arafat's Fatah movement, said the occupation was
"the last shot that Sharon had. He will be disappointed if he
believes he can terrorize the Palestinian people and destroy their
resistance. He has to know that he is stirring up hell and the
Israeli people will pay the price of his acts," he told AFP.
The
escalating violence prompted the United States, which is seen as
Israel's main ally and has generally preferred to work alone in the
region, to call for a "concerted effort" with European and
Arab countries to bring about peace.
In
another aggression for the Israeli occupation forces, the Israeli
army occupied the town of Wadi al-Saqa in the central Gaza Strip and
ordered the surrender of all men there aged 16 to 60, residents told
AFP.
Israeli
troops told the men to gather in a large square near the mosque
where they were blindfolded and their hands were tied, said
residents contacted by telephone from Gaza City. The move followed a
pattern that has been established since last week, when Sharon
announced his intention of hitting the Palestinians harder and
harder until they came to the negotiating table.
More
than 1,000 Palestinians have been rounded up for interrogation in
refugee camps, towns and villages. The fierce Israeli crackdown
comes as U.S. Middle East peace envoy Anthony Zinni is due to return
to the region this week.
But
U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a television
interview that U.S. consultations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt
"suggest that a concerted effort by the parties in the region
and also with the European Union might be needed now to push forward
a little bit what are some positive steps that the parties have
taken."
She
said Zinni would have "a kind of renewed mandate" to try
to implement a cease-fire plan put together last year by U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet.
"It's
very important for people to understand that he is going to stay
there for a while and try to get the parties into a better situation
for talks on peace," she said. Rice said President George W.
Bush would be prepared to intervene personally "when he thinks
that it can move the process forward." 
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