A total of five Palestinians were shot dead late Tuesday by Israeli forces in Gaza Strip. Israeli troops, guarding Netzarim settlement, killed four men and an eight-year-old boy at the nearby Palestinian village of Mughraqa in two separate incidents, Palestinian security officials said.
The Israeli army said its troops had fired at four gunmen approaching Netzarim's access route in the first incident, and, in the second, had fired back after being shot at from Mughraqa. Two other boys were wounded in this incident, Palestinian security sources said. In Dura, south of Hebron, two Palestinians were arrested by a special Israeli force.
On the diplomatic front, US President George W. Bush will announce steps to advance Middle East peace efforts "in the very near future," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Washington.
Powell said Washington remained interested in convening an international conference to discuss the Middle East and denied Bush had given Israel tacit approval for military incursions into the Palestinian territories.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal is to meet with Bush ahead of a planned Friday meeting with Powell, completing the latest round of consultations with regional leaders, the secretary said.
The Bush-Saud meeting "does complete this round of consultations and I think, as the president has said, he will pull this altogether with his advisers and I think in the very near future he will make known to the American people and to the world, and especially the people in the region, his vision of how to move forward," Powell said.
"I think you will see that coming from the administration, from the president in the not-too-distant future," he told reporters.
Powell did not elaborate on what Bush might say in the announcement or when he might make it. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
