Tuesday July 31 7:11 AM ET

Palestinians Killed in West Bank Blast - Witnesses

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - At least five Palestinians were killed on Tuesday in an explosion in an office of the militant Muslim group Hamas in the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses and ambulance workers said.

The witnesses said missiles fired from an Israeli aircraft hit the office.

Ambulance workers at the scene said they saw at least five bodies. The deaths could not be independently confirmed.

Israel has carried out a series of targeted killings, described by Palestinians as assassinations, of Palestinian militants as part of a declared policy to foil bombing attempts inside the Jewish state.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001

Answers

Rage Explodes After Israeli Attack on Hamas

By Michael Rose

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Thousands of enraged Palestinians demonstrated across the West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday after Israeli forces killed eight people in an attack on Hamas headquarters in Nablus.

Two leaders of the militant Islamic movement and two children passing nearby were among those killed in the attack. At least 21 people were injured, hospital officials said.

A Palestinian policeman and a member of the Islamic Jihad group were also killed in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) on Tuesday, yielding the highest one-day death toll since a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 21 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv disco two months ago.

Thousands of Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Nablus after the Hamas offices on the third floor of a seven-story building were hit by what witnesses said could have been missiles or tank shells.

Other protesters exchanged fire with Israeli soldiers west of the Palestinian-ruled town.

In Ramallah, a West Bank city near Jerusalem, hundreds of demonstrators clashed with Israeli troops who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition, witnesses said. Palestinian snipers returned fire from nearby buildings.

Other demonstrations and clashes were reported in all of the main cities and towns of the West Bank and Gaza. About 50,000 people marched in Gaza City and 7,000 in Jenin, Reuters correspondents said.

THREATS OF REVENGE

``The Israeli people will pay a heavy price,'' Hamas's spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said in Gaza after the attack.

Thousands who gathered outside the Hamas building in Nablus immediately after the attack added their voices to his call for revenge. Others wept as bodies were carried away.

Medical officials said the two dead children, brothers aged eight and 10, had simply been in the wrong place when the attack was launched. Their parents were being treated for shock, a family friend said.

Doctors said the intense force of the blast blew the heads right off two men in the Hamas office. Medical teams combing through the debris used tweezers to collect tiny fragments of victims' flesh and bones.

The Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) declared two days of mourning.

Israel has a policy of killing Palestinians it says are involved in attacks on its citizens. A statement issued by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) said: ``The army acted in order to prevent acts of murder...against Israeli civilians.''

TERROR ATTACKS EXPECTED

The army said in a statement it had acted on information that the Hamas command in the northern West Bank was responsible for ``a long series of deadly attacks'' including the Tel Aviv disco bombing and a suicide bomb that killed five people in a shopping mall in northern Israel in May.

Raanan Gissin, a senior aide to Sharon, said the targeted Hamas group had been planning new operations aimed at Jerusalem.

He said an investigation was under way into the deaths of the two boys, which Israel ``deeply regretted,'' but accused Hamas of letting children into volatile areas for use as human shields.

``If the children were killed there, it is a result of this deliberate and cynical policy which we deplore,'' Gissin told Reuters.

A Palestinian Authority statement listed names of the eight victims including Jamal Mansour and Jamal Salim, top Hamas political leaders. Mansour had spent several years in Israeli jails.

``We call on our people to unify their ranks against the Israeli official terrorism,'' the Authority's statement said.

Yassin promised a response from Hamas's military wing: ''Israel has crossed all red lines. The Israeli people...will discover our blood is not cheap...I leave it to the Qassam brigades to react.''

CALLS FOR INTERVENTION

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), speaking in Jordan after meeting King Abdullah, urged world leaders to send international monitors to the occupied territories.

The king urged U.S. President George Bush in a telephone call to take steps to defuse the ``very dangerous'' situation.

Fourteen Palestinians have now died within two days in blasts that Palestinian officials blamed on Israel.

On Monday, Palestinians blamed Israel for a blast that killed six members of a military wing of Arafat's Fatah (news - web sites) faction near Jenin. Israel denied any role and said the men might have set off a bomb accidentally.

The same day, seven policemen were wounded in a helicopter strike in Gaza City against a Palestinian police compound where Israel said mortar bombs were being made.

In Gaza on Tuesday, a member of the militant Islamic Jihad group was killed during what the group said was a clash with Israeli soldiers. The army denied any exchange of fire.

Palestinian officials said a Palestinian policeman had been killed in a separate incident as tanks pushed more than 500 meters (yards) into Palestinian-run territory near Gaza City.

At least 508 Palestinians, 130 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have died since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September. A truce brokered by the United States in June has yet to take hold.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001