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Palestinian Activist Retaliates For Israeli Massacre
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| Sharon's hawkish policies killed security in the region |
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Jan. 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian activist has opened fire with an automatic weapon in the center of west Jerusalem, injuring more than 40 people, news agencies reported.
Israeli police sources said that the Palestinian activist fired on people at a bus stop and other passers-by for about 10 minutes before being shot dead, BBC’s online news service said.
An offshoot of Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement claimed responsibility for the shooting in central Jerusalem Tuesday.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade identified the activist as Saeed Ibrahim Ramadan, 24, from a village near Nablus. The brigades said Ramadan's attack was in revenge for the killing of Fatah leader, Raed al-Karmi, January 14 and for the deaths of four Hamas activists who were assassinated in an Israeli raid in the West Bank town of Nablus earlier Tuesday.
Following an incursion by Israeli forces into the Palestinian-run West Bank city of Nablus, in which four Hamas members were assassinated, thousands of demonstrators surrounded a Palestinian police station in the town and forced the release of an activist – the brother of one of those killed in the raid.
At one point, Palestinian police opened fire on the crowd.
Earlier Tuesday, January 22, four Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli occupation troops during an incursion early Tuesday into the autonomous city of Nablus in the north of the West Bank, Israeli and Palestinian security officials said.
Israel’s occupation army had earlier put the death toll at five, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
It said it had entered Nablus, an autonomous Palestinian city around 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Jerusalem where Palestinian resistance activists retaliated and opened fire on Israeli soldiers who replied, killing four Palestinians. Nine others were arrested, the spokesman said.
The occupation soldiers claimed to have discovered a secret laboratory used to make explosives, the spokesman said.
Palestinian hospital sources identified three of the dead as Nasim Abu Arus, Yusef Surahji, and Jasser Samaru. Palestinian security officials said the three men were members of the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas.
According to western figures, the latest deaths bring to 1,154 the number of those killed since the start of the nearly 16-month Al-Aqsa Intifada against Israeli occupation, 884 of whom are Palestinians – mostly children and teenagers - and 248 Israelis.
The Palestinians have accused hawkish Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, of reoccupying areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority in an effort to topple Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat. Palestinian officials also called Monday, January 21, for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the takeover of TulKarem.
Earlier in the day, Israeli occupation troops quit the Palestinian West Bank town of Tulkarem after a 24-hour occupation.
Palestinian officials and witnesses confirmed a military statement that tanks which invaded Tulkarem early Monday had pulled out, but said they had taken up positions outside the town.
Israeli occupation troops, with helicopters overhead, entered the city shortly after midnight Monday, imposing a full curfew and occupying up to a dozen houses, as troops and other security forces conducted house-to-house searches for suspected activists, Israel’s daily newspaper, Ha’aretz, reported.
At least two Palestinians were killed and 15 wounded in the incursion, according to Palestinian sources, with no casualties among the Israeli troops.
Israeli sources said the operation in Tulkarem "should be over in a few days.”
"The Israeli army has successfully completed its mission and has deployed around Tulkarem to be ready for any eventuality," an Israeli military spokesman said.
Two Palestinians were killed and a dozen were wounded during the operation, which followed the killing Thursday night of six Israelis in a retaliatory operation by Palestinian resistance activists said to be from Tulkarem, in the nearby Israeli town of Hadera.
"Dozens more were arrested, including 11 who were on the list of Palestinians wanted by the Israeli security services," the spokesman said.
Monday's incursion was the first time - since Palestinian self-rule began in 1994 - that the Israelis had taken over an entire town in the Palestinian territories.
United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, slammed Israel Monday for its occupation of the West Bank town of Tulkarem.
Annan is "very concerned by the major Israeli incursion today into the Palestinian city of Tulkarem, in contravention of signed bilateral agreements," spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said, AFP reported.
"The secretary general reiterates his conviction that a solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be reached through force," she added.
The spokeswoman also said that Annan "deplores the destruction of the Palestinian radio and television station in Ramallah by Israeli forces on January 19."
Israeli occupation forces swarmed into a West Bank town Monday sparking deadly gun battles in the army's first full re-occupation of a Palestinian town since the 1994 launch of self-rule. Two people have been killed.
The Israeli army, meanwhile, kept up its siege on all the Palestinian towns in the northern West Bank. It also continues to occupy part of the West Bank city of Ramallah, where it is keeping Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, confined to his offices.
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