gelatik
07.03.02, 02:43
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli planes, helicopters and warships pounded
Gaza on Wednesday in one of the fiercest assaults of the Palestinian uprising.
Twelve Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed in violence in Gaza
and the West Bank.Israeli kept up the assault early Thursday as gunboats
targeted a Palestinian police roadblock near the Gaza City coast, wounding 13
policemen, three critically, Palestinian security officials and doctors said.
Other gunboats fired at Arafat's seaside Gaza office, witnesses said.
Seven of the Palestinians died in fighting in Gaza Wednesday. Five others died
in separate incidents, including a Hamas activist killed in an explosion at his
Gaza City home.
Late Wednesday, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at Yasser Arafat (news -
web sites)'s headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where the
Palestinian leader has been trapped for three months by Israeli forces. The
missile exploded 50 feet from Arafat's office as he was meeting with a European
Union (news - web sites) envoy. No one was hurt, officials said.
The Israeli military said the strike on Arafat's compound was "part of Israel's
fight against terror."
Amid the worst spate of violence since the start of the conflict 17 months ago,
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) promised Israel would
strike "without letup" until Palestinian militants' attacks on Israelis are
reined in.
"This is a really tough war we are in," the Israeli leader told troops and
Israeli officials at a military checkpoint south of Jerusalem.
Sharon's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, however, said force was not the
answer. "A cease-fire cannot be achieved just by using fire," he told
journalists in Jerusalem.
A spokesman for another Cabinet minister, Avigdor Lieberman, confirmed a
sardonic closed-door exchange during which Peres told Lieberman that
excessively harsh measures against the Palestinians could lead to war-crimes
accusations.
Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) also criticized the heavy
retaliation, and said both sides' policies were fueling violence that made
peace efforts impossible. "Mr. Sharon has to take a hard look at his policies
and see if they can work," Powell said in Washington. "I don't think declaring
war on Palestinians will work."
In an offensive that began late Tuesday and continued into Wednesday in Gaza,
Israel fired on targets from the land, sea and air.
After nightfall, Israeli helicopters fired at least six missiles at two
Palestinian security buildings in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip (news - web
sites), seriously damaging the structures and others nearby, Palestinians said.
One person was injured. The Israeli military said the air strike was "part of
Israel's ongoing fight against terror."
Arafat's home in Gaza City and a U.N.-run school for the blind were badly
damaged by shrapnel from an air strike Tuesday night on a nearby security
compound.
No one was in Arafat's home at the time; he was in Ramallah and his wife and
daughter live abroad. At the school, rubble crunched underfoot as young
students visited the site Wednesday, accompanied by U.N. officials.
The death of Hamas activist, Abdel Rahman Ghadal, was announced over mosque
loudspeakers near his Gaza City home, and the announcement blamed an Israeli
missile strike — a claim that could not be confirmed. Israel has carried out
dozens of targeted killings of those believed to have orchestrated attacks
against Israelis.
Also, soldiers shot and killed two Palestinians who were trying to plant a bomb
near a crossing point between Gaza and Israel, military sources said.
In clashes, two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian fire, the military
said. The heaviest fighting was reported in the villages of Abassan and Karrara
in southern Gaza, where witnesses said 12 tanks moved into the area, drawing
intense Palestinian fire. Helicopter gunships fired machine guns toward the
gunmen, sending civilians scrambling for cover.
A 40-year-old Palestinian woman was killed by a shot in the back, and two other
civilians were critically wounded, Palestinian doctors said. Israeli troops
barred ambulances from reaching the two wounded men, who died after being left
untreated for about three hours, the doctors said. There was no comment by the
army.
Israeli navy gunboats fired at a Palestinian base on the coast north of Gaza
City, killing four members of the Palestinian naval police. One officer died
after a shell hit his jeep, and the bodies of three of his colleagues were
discovered later Wednesday in the rubble of the base.
In the West Bank, Palestinian officials said two Palestinians died at Israeli
military checkpoints in separate incidents. The army said one of them was
trying to bring in explosives.
Since violence erupted in September 2000, 1,067 people have died on the
Palestinian side and 319 on the Israeli side.
The Israeli strike against Gaza came several hours after Palestinians fired two
unguided Qassam rockets late Tuesday, hitting the nearby Israeli town of Sderot
in a strike that wounded a baby and slightly injured another child.
After daybreak, Israeli F-16 warplanes flattened a two-story office building
used by the Palestinian police chief in Gaza, Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaidie.
Tanks also moved toward the northern Gaza towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya,
digging up the main road and building barriers.
The violence has fueled debate inside Sharon's government over whether any
political resolution can be found.
Citing the "terrible, terrible" recent days, Peres said Israel should demand
from Arafat a clear-cut declaration that he would halt terror, but also have
its own army do everything possible "not to escalate the situation."
Peres' bitter exchange with the infrastructure minister, Lieberman, was
reported in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper and confirmed Wednesday by Lieberman's
spokesman, Sagiv Rotenberg. According to the Yediot account, Lieberman urged
that Palestinians be told to halt all terror activity or face wide-ranging
attacks.
"At 8 a.m. we'll bomb all the commercial centers ... at noon we'll bomb their
gas stations ... at 2 we'll bomb their banks," Lieberman reportedly told the
meeting before Peres interrupted to say: "And at 6 p.m., you'll receive an
invitation to the international tribunal in The Hague (news - web sites)."
