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Palestinian Killed as Israeli Tanks Pin Down Gunmen in West Bank
NABLUS, West Bank, Dec 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian man was shot dead Wednesday as Israeli forces charged into Palestinian-controlled land in the northern West Bank in hot pursuit of gunmen who opened fire on them earlier, Palestinian officials said in news agency reports.
Walid Saadi, 53, was killed by heavy machine-gun fire as tanks and helicopters fought a pitched battle with the Palestinian gunmen, holed up in a house on the edge of Jenin after attacking an Israeli army post, Palestinian medics said.
It was not immediately clear if Saadi was one of gunmen or a civilian caught in the intense fire, although Israeli military sources said two armed men had been shot, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Israeli forces did not say how many gunmen they had faced down, although officials had earlier said it was two.
The army said the fighting lasted several hours before its forces abruptly pulled out of the Palestinian-controlled area. Israeli public radio said they had withdrawn after an unusual agreement was made for Palestinian Authority security officials to take charge of the situation.
The fate of the injured Palestinians, said by the army to have been combatants, was not immediately known.
An army spokesman said the gunmen had been heading through Israeli-controlled territory east of the town when they ran into an army post and opened fire. The spokesman claimed they had been planning to attack the nearby Jewish settlement of Qadim.
The Israeli soldiers returned fire, but the men escaped into Palestinian self-rule land next to the northern town of Jenin.
The army chased them with tanks into land under the control of the Palestinian Authority and tracked them down to a house where the men took cover. The Palestinians then threw two grenades at soldiers and border police, injuring one policeman slightly.
A firefight erupted around the house, Palestinian and Israeli security officials said, during which tanks fired two shells into the building.
Helicopters also opened fire, killing Saadi, Palestinian officials said.
His death brings the death toll of the 15-month-old uprising to 1,118, including 861 Palestinians and 234 Israelis.
According to Jenin hospital officials, two Palestinians were injured in the exchange, as the tanks and two jeeps entered 400 yards into Palestinian territory to besiege the house.
On Tuesday, an Israeli soldier and two Palestinian gunmen were killed in intense clashes on the normally quiet border with Jordan, following an ambush of an Israeli patrol.
Meanwhile, the head of the Palestinian legislative council, Ahmed Qorei, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has reached an agreement to set up a restart to peace negotiations, a Palestinian source said Wednesday.
The document addresses four points, including Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state, and is similar to that published on December 23 by the Israeli daily,
Yediot Aharonot.
The Palestinian leadership decided Tuesday to maintain high-level contacts with Israel, despite its decision to stop Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from attending midnight mass in Bethlehem in the West Bank, and Israel confirmed that the contacts between Qorei and Peres had the agreement of hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Peres was on a trip to the Ukraine Wednesday and reacted favorably to a suggestion from Kiev to host Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Yalta, where the victorious allies from the second world war divided up the globe in 1945.
In other news, two French activists were briefly detained by Israeli police Wednesday as they and some 40 other protestors tried to cross into Gaza from Israel, in a trip to show solidarity with the Palestinian people, a spokeswoman for the group said.
Huwaida Arraf of the International Solidarity Movement said Israeli soldiers at the border fired warning shots in the air to stop a group of around 40 international protestors from trying to cross the boundary after permission to do so was denied.
After being detained for more than four hours, the foreign peace activists decided to try to enter and were fired upon with tear gas. The
Palestinian Monitor reported that as an act of intimidation, Israeli soldiers fired into the air.
Soldiers then manhandled protestors when they refused to leave and forced them back onto their buses, she said. Several protestors suffered cuts and bruises in the incident, she said, adding that their camera film was confiscated.
The Monitor reported the foreign protestors were physically attacked.
A police spokesman, however, said only one French woman was briefly detained on request from the army, which accused her of taking photographs in a military zone and preventing security officers performing their work.
He confirmed police and soldiers carried protestors back on to their buses, when excessive force was used.
"Nobody needed medical treatment afterwards," Superintendent Gil Kleiman said, adding that the operation had only lasted a few minutes.
He said the demonstrators had tried to stage a sit-down protest in no-man's-land beyond the last Israeli checkpoint leading into the Gaza Strip.
The protestors were part of a group of 90 foreign activists from the International Solidarity Movement and the Graduates' International Protection for Palestinians who were trying to enter Gaza where they were scheduled to conduct solidarity visits with Palestinians.
As well as French activists, there were British, American and Italian citizens in the group, Huwaida said. Many of these activists are in Palestine as part of a peaceful and non-violent movement.
The Monitor said the Israeli army also detained, for several hours, Palestinians waiting to meet them.
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