A Palestinian was killed and seven others were injured late Friday when Israeli forces shelled the West Bank town of Hebron. But conflicting Israeli reports said two Palestinians were killed while handling explosives.
Rajai Abu Rajab, 35, was fatally wounded by shrapnel from a shell, said the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, adding that seven others were wounded at the offices of the Palestinian Authority.
The shelling came at the end of a day of tension in the autonomous town, where the residents attended the funerals of three Palestinians, including a three-month-old boy, killed the previous day in an attack claimed by extremist Jewish settlers.
At least 18 Palestinians were injured in clashes late Thursday and Friday between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in Hebron, where around 400 Israeli settlers live entrenched in the middle of 120,000 Palestinians.
According to Haaretz newspaper, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a statement that there had been no military activity in the area where the Palestinains claimed the shelling took place.
A military source instead said an explosion resulted from a "work accident" -- a term used by the army to describe blasts when Palestinians accidentally set off explosives.
Reuters quoted Fateh official Theyab Al Sharabati from Hebron as saying that rockets were fired toward the office minutes after a Fateh meeting had been scheduled to take place.
The meeting was cancelled "because we are on high alert due to Sharon's policies," he was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said one of its soldiers had been injured by a thrown stone in Halhoul, near Hebron, while Palestinian sources reported exchanges of fire between the village of Beit Jala in the West Bank and the Jewish settlement area of Gilo in occupied east Jerusalem, although there were no injuries.
Separately, Israeli tanks fired on a refugee camp and living area in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, damaging houses but not causing any casualties, Palestinian security sources said, cited by WAFA.
In another development, the Palestinian leadership called on armed Palestinians to respect the ceasefire, saying in a statement that shooting "damages the national Palestinian interests."
The statement referred to Palestinian fire followed Thursday evening by an Israeli response in the area around the Muntar crossing point (known to Israelis as Karni) in the Gaza Strip, which caused a fire in Palestinian oil installations.
"These irresponsible acts are repeated too often," said the statement, adding that they had resulted in serious damage and several wounded on the Palestinian side.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
