Three Israeli soldiers were killed and two injured early Thursday when a powerful bomb exploded near the central Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim, Haaretz reported.
The bomb hit a mixed Israeli civilian-military convoy on the road from Karni crossing to the settlement. The bomb was set off by remote control, Israel Radio reported.
It said the bomb damaged a tank in the convoy, which it said went up in flames. Some six weeks ago, an Israeli tank was destroyed in Gaza in a similar manner.
One of the injured was in serious condition, the radio said. The wounds of the other injured person were described as moderate.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, the Salahudin Brigade which unites activists mainly from Fatah and the Islamic Resistance movement Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing attack.
Meanwhile, Israel has pulled some 40 tanks out of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah early Thursday after US President George Bush called the Israeli army campaign "not helpful", Palestinian security sources said.
Some 30 tanks left their positions and moved east of the self-rule town overnight, while earlier another 10 moved toward the north, the same sources said.
Some 60 tanks are still estimated to be inside Ramallah in the third day of Israel's largest military offensive in the region in 35 years.
Bush
US President George W. Bush said Wednesday that recent Israeli military actions against Palestinians were "not helpful" to efforts to forge peace in the Middle East. "Frankly, it's not helpful what the Israelis have recently done," he said during a formal press conference. "I understand someone trying to defend themselves and to fight terror, but the recent actions aren't helpful."
U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni left for the Middle East later in an attempt to craft a cease-fire under a plan drafted by CIA Director George Tenet last year. Regarding this, Bush said: "Zinni's job is to go over there and work to get conditions such that we can get into Tenet. He's got a lot of work to do but if I didn't think he could make progress, I wouldn't have asked him to go."
A US State Department spokesman warned against the sabotage of Zinni's mission. "No party should act in any way that makes that objective harder to achieve," State Department spokesman Scott McClellan said a day before Zinni was expected to arrive in Israel. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
