OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 3 August — Israel warned the Palestinian Authority yesterday that it will not exercise any so-called restraint in the event of any further suicide bombings on Israeli territory and carry out strikes, the second Israeli television channel reported.
In Nablus, Israeli airborne troops seeking a Palestinian activist involved in a foiled bus bombing hauled the wrong suspect into a waiting helicopter and whisked him away yesterday, an Israeli military source said.
The source said the Palestinian man, identified by Palestinian officials as 22-year-old Murad Bsharat, was mistakenly arrested in the helicopter search for a militant who had given explosives to a would-be bus bomber. The military source said Bsharat was returned by helicopter to the spot where he was grabbed. His family confirmed he was safely home.
A Palestinian was shot and killed yesterday and another was wounded during an exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops near Nablus.
Feras Abder Haq, 23, was killed instantly and the other man, who was not identified, was seriously wounded in the clash near a road west of the town used by Jewish settlers.
Seven Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire in separate incidents in the Gaza Strip, including two boys who were badly injured, Palestinian hospital sources said.
The 12-year-old and two other Palestinians were hit during clashes between Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing protesters to the east of Gaza City, near the Karni crossing point between Palestinian territory and Israel, they said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian security sources said that three Israeli tanks moved into the autonomous Palestinian sector of Deir el-Balah, in the center of the Gaza Strip, late yesterday. The tanks crossed some 800 meters into an area officially under full Palestinian control, damaging two buildings with shell fire after.
In Damascus, the head of Islamic Jihad and a senior official of Hamas, threatened Israel yesterday with bloodly and painful reprisals for its targeted killing earlier this week of six Hamas activists.
“The response will be one of deaths, blood and a war of the same intensity as is being carried out by the Zionist enemy,” Islamic Jihad’s Ramadan Abdullah Shallah told around 1,000 supporters at a Palestinian refugee camp outside Damascus.
In Rome, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called yesterday for an end to “all forms of violence” between Israel and the Palestinians, after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Pope John Paul II.
“I demand the end of all forms of violence and the immediate sending of international observers,” Arafat told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Italy.
Arafat said that Italian leaders and the pope had shown “a real willingness to help and support” the Middle East peace process.
