OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 23 October — A senior Hamas activist was among five Palestinians killed by Israeli troops yesterday as Tel Aviv continued its crippling siege of six Palestinian cities on the West Bank in its most concerted action against the Palestinians since the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian interim accords.
Two Palestinians were killed last night when their car was hit by a missile launched from an Israeli helicopter in the West Bank city of Nablus.
The dead were named as Ayman Halawa, a member of Hamas and Azmi Musri, who Palestinians said might have had links with Hamas. One version said the blast was caused by a car bomb.
Palestinians said a member of the elite Force 17 unit was seriously wounded in Ramallah yesterday in a clash with Israeli soldiers, and a 19-year-old youth died in the morning of wounds sustained in Israeli shelling in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Saturday.
Palestinian security officials said Israeli troops killed a Palestinian outside a hospital in Beit Jala.
In an industrial area of Jerusalem, a Palestinian shot and wounded four people before a soldier killed him. Police said the killing followed a money dispute with his Israeli employer.
Israeli tank fire killed a 65-year-old Palestinian in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, Palestinians said.
Despite pronouncements by Israeli leaders that they had no intention of remaining permanently in Palestinian-controlled territory, the army continued beefing up its blockading forces, and there appeared no sign that the troops would be withdrawn soon.
Israel tanks and troops swept into Bethlehem after the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Zeevi Rehavam in Jerusalem last Wednesday.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met for four hours yesterday with UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, EU Middle East Envoy, Miguel Moratinos, US Consul General Roland Schliker, and Russian envoy Andrea Vidovin, as part of international efforts to restore calm to the region.
In Bethlehem, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement yesterday warned the Israeli Army to end its occupation of this West Bank town or see the neighboring Jewish settlement of Gilo engulfed in rifle and mortar fire.
“If the Israeli Army does not withdraw from Bethlehem in the coming hours, Fatah will impose its own curfew on Gilo by shooting and shelling,” the Bethlehem branch of Fatah warned in a statement.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), outlawed by the Palestinian Authority on Sunday, vowed yesterday to keep up its attacks on Israel.
“Those groups which resist the occupation are all Palestinian. They resist the occupation and try to do the best for our people,” Kayed Al-Gul, a PFLP leader, told AFP.
In Beirut, Israeli jets raided yesterday areas near the Shebaa Farms shortly after Hezbollah launched an attack against Israeli posts, Lebanese police said.
Two Israeli jets fired at least four rockets on the region of Saddana on the outskirts of Shebaa Frams, the sources said.
