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Two Dead as Israel Unleashes Wave of Airstrikes on Palestinian Cities
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec. 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - At least two Palestinians, including a schoolboy, were killed and more than a hundred wounded in the latest Israeli air raids on the West Bank and Gaza Strip Tuesday, news agencies reported.
Israeli rockets slammed into a Palestinian police building just yards from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters, where he was working Tuesday, Palestinian officials said.
Arafat was unhurt in the strike on a police post close to his offices, but the raids cost civilian lives as Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed security buildings in Gaza City, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Israeli army spokesman Brigadier General Ron Kitry said that Arafat was not the target of the raids.
Israeli U.S.-made Apache helicopters also fired rockets on a security building in Tulkarem, Salfit in the West Bank, and Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The intensified air raids came a day after hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Arafat's Palestinian Authority of sponsoring "terrorism" and failing to arrest those behind this weekend's bomb attacks that killed 25 Israelis and wounded dozens more.
A 25-year-old member of Palestinian preventative security, Mohammed Ahmed Siam, and an unidentified 15-year-old student were killed when F-16s bombarded the security headquarters north of Gaza City, said the director of Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital.
The boys from the al-Aqsa junior boys school were walking out of classes when several missiles slammed into the security building across the street, said the head of the emergency department at Al-Shifa hospital here, Mowia Abu Hasaneen.
Aside from the two deaths, Hasaneen said most of the other boys - about 60 of them -suffered shrapnel wounds, but none of their lives were in danger.
Hospital officials said around 120 people in all were wounded in the airstrikes.
In Khan Yunis to the south, the main headquarters of Palestinian national security and the local headquarters of the preventative security department were hit by missiles from the helicopters, officials said.
In Tulkarem, on the boundary between the northern West Bank and Israel, Apache helicopters fired 15 missiles at a special police building and the offices of Force 17, an elite group whose duties include protecting Arafat.
And in a separate attack, an Israeli helicopter fired three missiles at a Palestinian military intelligence building in the town of Salfit, between Ramallah and Nablus, Palestinian security officials said. F-16s were also flying over Nablus, witnesses said.
The Gaza strikes, which spread panic throughout the city, also hit Arafat's personal helicopters, wrecked the day before when Israeli helicopters fired rockets and machine guns at the symbol of Arafat's power. Two of his helicopters were destroyed, and third seriously damaged, effectively grounding the Palestinian Authority president.
Israeli soldiers have also entered several Palestinian-ruled areas in the West Bank, including the town of Ramallah, where they were poised just 200 meters from Arafat's compound there, reported BBC's online news service.
And in the West Bank town of Nablus, a member of Fatah was reportedly shot dead by Israeli gunfire.
Overnight, Palestinian tanks and bulldozers penetrated deep into Palestinian self-rule areas in the southern Gaza Strip to churn up the runaway of Gaza International Airport, used exclusively by Arafat since Israel shut down the terminal to the public earlier in the 14-month Palestinian uprising.
In his meeting with Sharon this weekend, U.S. President George W. Bush did not issue any appeal, as it has in the past, for Israel to restrain its response; White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday, "Israel is a sovereign power… Israel has a right to defend itself," quoted by BBC News.
And Secretary of State Colin Powell said Israel was "recovering from a terrible blow" and that Sharon was "responding in a way that he believes appropriate to defend his people and defend his country."
Although Powell and other U.S. officials said that they urge both sides to always consider the repercussions of their actions "tomorrow and a day after tomorrow," they refrained from making any further appeals towards peace
Meanwhile, as the international community condemned the deadly weekend attacks, some voices were raised along side those of the Arab world in condemnation of Israel's aggressive strikes against Palestinian Authority establishments.
Just as the Muslim World League, based in Islam's holiest city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, condemned the Israeli attacks as "state terrorism," Turkey - Israel's ally and the only Muslim-majority country in NATO - sided with Arab and Muslim opinion in blasting Sharon for ordering "retaliatory strikes."
"Sharon is determined to implement very excessive, unjust measures against the Palestinian Authority," Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said. "If this turns into an actual war, it may lead to a situation that could be more dangerous than the one in Afghanistan, particularly for our region."
And in Paris, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine accused the Israeli government of conducting a deliberate policy aimed at eliminating Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.
"Arafat has been weakened by the harassment of the Israeli army... and as a result people are using his weakness as an argument to say that since he can not reestablish order in his own camp, he should in some way be eliminated," said Vedrine. "Sadly, it looks like a deliberate policy," he said on French public radio France Inter.
"I fear that there's a real worst case policy behind that to eliminate the Palestinian Authority," he added.
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