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Four Palestinians Killed in Israeli Strike, Children Injured
OCCUPIED BETHLEHEM, July 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Four Palestinians, including two Hamas activists, were killed when Israeli attack helicopters fired missiles on a house in the West Bank town of Bethlehem Tuesday, hospital sources told news agencies.
Two of the men killed were identified as Omar Saada, 45, a local leader of the Islamic Occupation Resistance Movement (Hamas) and fellow Hamas activist Taher Al-Arouj, 40.
The other two victims were identified as Mohammed Saada, a brother of the dead Hamas leader, and Itzhak Saada, another family member.
Witnesses said children were among the 14 people injured in the attack, which destroyed the single-story house in the center of the Palestinian-governed town just south of Jerusalem.
Palestinian sources said the helicopters struck a house belonging to the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the town of Bethlehem.
The attack followed an overnight assault by Israeli tanks on Palestinian checkpoints in the towns of Jenin and Tulkarem, in supposed retaliation for an occupation resistance bomb attack in northern Israel, news agencies said.
The tense security situation earlier led Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to call off a week-long visit to the United States.
The
Palestinians have accused Israel of assassinating more than 30 occupation
activists via bombs, helicopter gunships and political assassinations (among
various other methods) since the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against
Israeli occupation began almost 10 months ago.
The latest deaths bring to 44 the number of people killed since a botched U.S.-sponsored ceasefire was agreed upon a month ago. It has thus far failed to bring an end to violence.
Since the Palestinian uprising started on September 28, 2000 (following Sharon's incursion onto Al Haram Al-Sharif) a total of 658 people have been killed, including 513 Palestinians, mostly children and teenagers, and 126 Israelis (including 13 Palestinians regarded as "Israeli-Arabs").
On Monday, a Palestinian bomber blew himself up near a crowded train station in Israel, killing two people and wounding six others in an attack Israel blamed on Arafat.
The blast ripped through the station in the northern Israeli town of Binyamina, coming a day after Arafat met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for talks on the surging Middle East violence.
"The suicide attack in Binyamina shows that the Palestinian Authority has not yet decided to fight or act against terrorism," hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said at the opening ceremony of the Maccabiah games, or Jewish Olympics, in Jerusalem.
He denounced the attack as "savage." It was the first bomb blast in Israel to claim Israeli lives since 21 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a Tel Aviv nightclub on June 1.
A report in the right-wing newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, said the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that the suicide bomber himself came from the village of Burkin, west of Jenin.
The article also stated that eight (rather than six) people were wounded in the blast.
An earlier Post article referred to sources from Sharon's office as saying that the Israeli occupation forces would retaliate swiftly and decisively in line with a recent security cabinet decision to allow Israel to further escalate its assaults in the event of such an attack.
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