Two Israeli soldiers were shot Tuesday night, during an exchange of fire with Palestinians at the Kissufim checkpoint on the Israeli border with Gaza Strip.
The soldiers sustained light-to-moderate injuries. Israeli military sources said that armed Palestinians crossed the border into Israel. At least one Palestinian was killed in this incident, according to Israeli reports.
TIPH
Two members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) observers force were killed Tuesday evening, after the vehicle in which they were traveling came under fire from an unknown source.
The attack took place near Halhul, north-west of Hebron.
A Norwegian official in the West Bank said the two dead were a Turkish man and a Swiss woman.
Israel said the two were killed by Palestinian gunmen, with Israeli sources saying that no Israeli troops were stationed in the area.
But the mayor of Hebron denied Palestinian gunmen were behind the attack.
"The observers were shot by Israeli soldiers who, according to doctors, fired... bullets which are only used by the Israeli army," Mayor Mustafa al-Natsheh told Reuters.
In a statement, the Palestinian Authority said it blamed the shooting on Israeli forces and expressed "its condolences to the families of the victims, to the Turkish government and the Swiss government."
Roadblock Attack
Earlier, a Palestinian man threw an explosve device at soldiers manning an Israeli roadblock near the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank.
The device failed to explode, and the man escaped on foot to the nearby village of Kafr Haras, Israel Radio reported. Israeli sources said that the man had tried to detonate his device close to soldiers.
No soldiers were injured in the incident.
Car Bomb
Israel's Shin Bet security services and members of the Border Police thwarted a bombing attack Tuesday morning in Jerusalem, after a booby-trapped car in which two Palestinians were driving blew up near the village of Walajeh south of Jerusalem, close to Bethlehem.
According to Israeli press reports, the car was headed either for the Malha Shopping Mall in Jerusalem or for the nearby Biblical Zoo. The car exploded after police ordered it to stop near a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Acting on intelligence reports warning of an attack, dozens of Israeli police had surrounded Jerusalem's Malha Mall in recent days.
"The car with explosives was headed from the outskirts of the West Bank town of Bethlehem toward southern Jerusalem when police spotted it," police spokesman Kobi Zariyahu said. Police ordered the car to stop. "The car exploded, killing two passengers."
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for this attack in Jerusalem.
In a telephone call to AFP, a man claiming to represent the group identified the two activists as Khaled Moussa, 19, and Shadi Hamamneh, 22, from villages close to Bethlehem.
Israel's Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Tuesday there has been a discernible drop in violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the last few days, but that Arafat had not handed down any clear orders to his security forces to impose a cease-fire. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
