ISRAEL - bombards Palestinian targets

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herald-sun Israel Bombards Palestinian Targets By IBRAHIM BARZAQ : Associated Press Writer

Apr 8, 2001 : 6:18 pm ET BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (AP) -- The Israeli army bombarded Palestinian targets in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday night, plunging a town into darkness and injuring four people including a 10 year-old boy. The four victims suffered moderate shrapnel wounds, a Palestinian hospital official said. The Palestinian police said the Israelis fired three surface-to-surface rockets at the town of Beit-Lahiya, north of Gaza City. The Israelis have not used rockets of this kind before in the past sixth months of conflict with the Palestinians. The Israeli army spokesman declined to say what weapons were used. However, an Israeli official confirmed that the attack was not carried out by helicopters armed with wire-guided antitank missiles, like other recent attacks in the Gaza Strip. In Sunday's attack the projectiles hit an abandoned police station, a headquarters of Yasser Arafat's Fatah group and a civilian home. Beit-Lahiya was plunged into darkness as the power supply was knocked out. The ceiling of the house collapsed, injuring a 60 year-old woman and a 10 year-old boy. The boy's father, Hamis Abu-Sultan, 42, showed reporters a bloodstained child's blanket. "What has this child done to the Israelis?" he said. The army spokesman said the attack was in response to the firing of mortar bombs by the Palestinians at Nahal Oz, an Israeli communal settlement outside the Gaza Strip. The fighting in the Gaza Strip has been intensifying with almost nightly exchanges of and rocket and mortar fire. Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian gunmen killed a suspected collaborator with Israel in the West Bank. The alleged informer, Mamoun Freij, 37, was sitting in his shop in the West Bank town of Tulkarem when three masked men entered, witnesses said. Freij was hit by 14 bullets, doctors at Tulkarem hospital said. Asfah 77, a group believed to have ties to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility. "The killing of this spy is a message to all the spies that we will punish them," the group said in a leaflet. Dozens of suspected informers were killed during the 1987-1993 uprising against Israeli occupation, but such attacks decreased after Palestinian self-rule was established in 1994. Since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in late September, two Palestinian informers were tried and executed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and several others are on death row. Freij, a resident of Tulkarem, lived in the northern Israeli city of Hadera for some years after having received Israeli citizenship as a reward for cooperating with Israel during the first uprising, Palestinian sources said. He returned to Tulkarem about three years ago, neighbors said. The Tulkarem killing took place as Israeli security forces were on alert for possible bomb attacks during the weeklong Passover holiday which began at sundown Saturday. Islamic militants have set off nine bombings since the fall, killing 14 Israelis and wounding more than 100, and the Hamas group said it had seven volunteers ready to carry out more suicide bombings in Israeli cities. Hamas, meanwhile, called on the Muslim world to protect the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week instructed police to find ways to allow non-Muslims to visit the compound, which has been closed to visitors since the fall. In a leaflet, Hamas warned Jews against visiting the compound, known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif, and called upon Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to prevent such visits "by all means." The fighting broke out after Sharon made a visit to the area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount because it is the site of their biblical Temples.

-- Anonymous, April 08, 2001


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