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An
Israeli rescue worker looks into a car in which an Israeli was
shot in Kibbutz Metzer
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, November 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Five Israelis
were killed late Sunday, November 10, when at least one Palestinian
armed with an automatic rifle opened fire in the Metzer kibbutz in
northern Israel, police said.
“A
mother and her two children aged 4 and 6 as well as two adults - a woman
and a man aged around 50 - all civilians, were shot dead by at least one
Palestinian terrorist in the Metzer kibbutz,” a police source told
journalists without naming the victims, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
Several
more people were wounded by the gunman who infiltrated the village close
to midnight despite a double attempted bombing in the same area earlier
in the day.
Earlier
on Sunday, thousands of Palestinians in the northern West Bank town of
Jenin woke up to scenes of widespread destruction of streets, homes,
telephone and power poles and many businesses by the Israeli army, the
Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) reported.
Jenin
acting governor, Haidar Irsheid, described the widespread vandalism in
the city as “devastating and very much similar to what the Nazi
occupation army did in Poland during the Second World War.”
The
Israeli army killed and injured more than ten Palestinians on Sunday and
rounded up over a hundred civilians on suspicion of involvement in
resistance activities against the occupation troops, IAP said.
Speaking
to the state radio on the kibbutz attack, Israel’s police chief
Schlomo Aharonochki said that “the attack was apparently perpetrated
by an isolated terrorist who managed to flee and has still not been
spotted, despite the manhunt that has been launched.”
The
website of the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz said the gunman first
fired on people walking home from the dining hall and then entered a
home and opened fire.
Northern
police chief Yaakov Borovsky was also quoted as telling public radio he
suspected more than one shooter was involved based on the number of
shots fired.
The
kibbutz security chief also reportedly spotted the gunman and opened
fire, but failed to hit him.
Large
numbers of Israeli border troops and soldiers were searching the area,
using flares to light up the area, with the help of a helicopter.
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There
has been a virtually constant Israeli army presence in Jenin
since June |
The
shooting attack was claimed in an anonymous telephone call to AFP by the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, said AFP.
“We
take responsibility for this operation,” said the fighter, who added
he was calling from the northern West Bank city of Jenin and that the
Brigades would later issue a complete statement.
Reacting
to the claim, Israeli Minister Without Portfolio Danny Naveh of the
right-wing Likud party told the radio: “This organization comes
directly under Arafat. This man can no longer be a partner (in
negotiations) and his place is no longer here. He must be banished, for
so long as he is there we cannot make progress toward peace.”
The
Metzer kibbutz is located about 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the
self-rule Palestinian town of Tulkarem, reoccupied like almost all of
the rest of the West Bank by the Israeli army since June.
Earlier
in the day, two Palestinian bombers managed to sneak across the Green
Line from the West Bank into the same area, but blew themselves up
without injuring anyone after border guards spotted them.
They
were spotted driving in a vehicle on a field track near the Metzer
kibbutz close to the border. The two men were told to stop but instead
detonated their devices.
Kibbutz
Metzer was founded on Palestinian land in 1953 by members of the Jewish
“Hashomer HaTza’ir” youth movement who immigrated to Israel from
Argentina. Until the 1967 war it was a border settlement.
