|
Israel Kills 10 Palestinians, Including 4 Children, Reoccupies West Bank
 |
|
Palestinians
carry the body of a Palestinian man killed Friday near
Gaza
.
|
OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, June 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The Israeli
occupation forces shot dead nine Palestinian citizens, including five
children, Friday, June 21, while Israeli settlers shot dead a 10th, as
the Israeli army reoccupied the West Bank.
Five
Palestinians, four of them children, were killed as Israeli troops
invaded rubble-reduced Jenin, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Jenin
is the site of the worst massacre of Palestinians throughout the
21-month-old Intifada, when the Israeli forces launched a deadly
incursion that left hundreds of Palestinians killed and wounded, and
dozens of homes demolished.
Israeli
forces also killed four Palestinians in Gaza Friday, as the army
poured into the West Bank town of Nablus, AFP added.
Meanwhile,
Jewish settlers shot dead a Palestinian young man in the northern West
Bank village of Huwara south of Nablus Friday.
Adnan
Odeh, 22, was hit in the chest and died instantly, AFP reported.
The
settlers also set fire to several shops in Huwara, AFP added.
Israeli
tanks earlier raked Jenin downtown with shells. Some struck about a
kilometer (less than a mile) to the north, killing four Palestinians,
medical sources said.
 |
|
The
Israeli occupation army killed 4 Palestinian children Friday.
|
Pre-dawn,
a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and five members of his
family wounded in Jenin when Israeli soldiers blew up a house close to
their own, a Palestinian hospital source said.
The
Nablus reoccupation was part of Israel's new policy of grabbing
Palestinian land in retaliation for recent resistance attacks. The
army is already occupying five other West Bank towns: Jenin, Qalqilya,
Beitunia near Ramallah, Bethlehem and Tulkarem.
The
move on Nablus was followed by a skirmish in the Gaza Strip, when
border guards killed three Palestinians near the Erez crossing point
into Israel.
A
Palestinian boy died after being hit in the chest by Israeli heavy
machine-gun fire that strafed his house south of Gaza City.
Sharon,
frustrated by the inability of the region's mightiest army to stem
Palestinian martyr attacks, vowed to seize and hold more Palestinian
territory.
"The
regular army is stretched to its limits," said the Israeli
newspaper Yediot Aharonot.
On
the international scene, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said
the European Union would stress the need for a new political
initiative in the Middle East during a Friday-Saturday summit in the
Spanish city of Seville, AFP said.
"The
message from the Europeans will be that we need a new political push,
which might be an international conference or something else,"
Solana said.
"What
form this takes is not that important," he said. "The
important thing is that there be a political push, a perspective for
getting out of the terrible situation in which we are now."
Meanwhile,
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer acknowledged that
Palestinian suicide bombers were motivated in part by "misery and
frustration", in an interview published by the Israeli daily
newspaper, Haaretz.
In
the last three days, three Palestinian resistance attacks have killed
31 Israelis, as well as two soldiers, who were killed in fighting in
the West Bank.
Although
the cycle of violence has stalled a U.S. peace initiative, Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat issued a call for "no more war" and
said he believed he could reach a peace agreement with hardliner
Sharon, said AFP.
In
an interview with Haaretz, Arafat said that "enough is
enough" and that he now accepted a framework for peace first made
by former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
Arafat
called late Wednesday, June 19, for a "complete halt" to all
attacks on Israeli civilians, and the U.S. State Department took a
somewhat positive line on his statement, describing it as "is a
step in the right direction”.
However,
Bush, trying to finalize a peace strategy built around the declaration
of a Palestinian state, would not be making any immediate announcement
on his blueprint to end the conflict, the White House said.
|
