ISRAEL - On alert for revenge attacks

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BC Wednesday, 1 August, 2001, 04:51 GMT 05:51 UK Israel on alert for revenge attacks

Protests capped one of the intifada's deadliest days

Israel is on high alert for possible acts of revenge by the militant movement Hamas, one day after an Israeli helicopter fired into a Hamas office in the West Bank city of Nablus, killing eight people.

The funerals of the victims, including two senior Hamas officials and two children, will be held in the West Bank on Wednesday.

Tensions flared following the attack on Tuesday, as thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the West Bank and Gaza and clashes broke out in various areas.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is scheduled to meet with his security cabinet Wednesday morning to discuss the deterioration of the last few days.

World leaders have condemned the Israeli attack in Nablus, saying it was an unnecessary escalation of violence and a breach of the ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States.

Deadly day

Jamal Mansour and Jamal Salim, both senior Hamas activists, were among those killed when an Israeli helicopter struck a third-floor research office belonging to the organisation.

Two children, eight-year-old Bilal Abu Khader and his five-year-old brother, Ashraf, who were playing outside the seven-storey building at the time of the attack, were also among the dead.

Mr Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin said the loss of innocent civilian life was regretted, but he suggested the children may have been used as "human shields".

A Hamas spokesman told the BBC that both leaders belonged to the group's political wing and had no connection to military operations.

The Palestinian Authority has declared two days of mourning for the victims.

A few hours after the attack, Palestinian gunmen shot five Jewish settlers, injuring one woman seriously, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli military sources said.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian policeman and a member of the Islamic Jihad group.

Also on Tuesday, three masked men executed a 57-year-old Palestinian man by a shot in the head in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem. The man was suspected of collaborating with Israel.

Three other men were sentenced to death in Nablus by a security court of the Palestinian Authority. They were found guilty of collaborating with Israel over the killing last year of a senior official from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

Thousands demonstrate

After the attack in Nablus, in one of the largest demonstrations of support for Hamas in months, about 50,000 people marched in Gaza City and thousands more demonstrated in the cities of Jenin, Ramallah and Nablus.

The demonstrations capped one of the bloodiest days since the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, with the highest single-day death toll since a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself and 21 Israelis up outside a night club in Tel Aviv.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas' spiritual leader, warned that the Israeli people would "pay the price" for the deaths, adding that Palestinian blood was not cheap.

Condemnation

The United States - usually Israel's staunchest ally and defender - issued an outspoken condemnation of the operation.

"This attack represents an escalation, is highly provocative, and makes efforts to restore calm much more difficult," said State Department spokesman Charles Hunter.

The UN envoy to the area, Terje Roed-Larsen, issued a statement condemning the attack.

"Such actions are almost guaranteed to lead to a further escalation of tension," the statement said.

British Foreign Office minister Ben Bradshaw said, "Britain cannot accept the targeted assassination of Palestinian militants."

The latest violence threatens to undermine international peace efforts to end confrontations in which 548 Palestinians and 133 Israelis have been killed.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001


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