OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 29 October — Palestinian gunmen killed four Israeli women and injured around 31 other people in a frenzied shooting spree in the northern Israeli city of Hadera yesterday, before police gunned down two of the attackers, police said. The bloody attack on a crowded bus stop in the city center came just hours after 22-year-old Israeli soldier Yaniv Levi was shot dead in his vehicle in the same region in what police termed a “terrorist attack”.
The Israeli Cabinet met later in the night to discuss the twin attacks, which may have been linked, and their impact on a possible pullout of Israeli forces which seized parts of six Palestinian towns in the West Bank after Palestinian extremists assassinated Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi on Oct. 17.
The Israeli Army, meanwhile, started withdrawing from the Palestinian town of Bethlehem late last night after a bloody 10-day reoccupation of the West Bank area, an army official told AFP. The official, who asked not to be named, said shortly after 2000 GMT that the withdrawal operation had started and would last several hours. He declined to give further details.
The shooting in Hadera erupted when a Mitsubishi jeep with Israeli license plates pulled up in central Hadera and two Palestinian gunmen armed with US-made M16 assault rifles sprayed people in the street with bullets, killing one immediately before Israeli police shot the killers down. Three Israelis later died in hospital of their wounds. All the victims were women.
The attack was claimed by the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which has carried out a series of deadly attacks on Israel and refuses to recognize a cease-fire agreed on last month by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
Just hours earlier, suspected Arab gunmen overtook the vehicle of an off-duty Israeli soldier and opened fire, killing him. The proximity of the two attacks in time and distance are likely to prompt serious questions about security measures, less than two weeks after the ultra-nationalist Zeevi was shot in the head while he was unguarded in a Jerusalem hotel room.
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the attack showed Arafat had done nothing to curb militant elements and was only paying lip-service to his cease-fire pledges to slash the violence.
Arafat said in a brief statement in Gaza City that he was “following the situation to find out who is behind the operation, but there is a Palestinian leadership decision to stop any operations, despite the Israeli escalation against our cities and people.”
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo denied that Palestinian gunmen had initiated fire on Israeli forces in Bethlehem on Saturday. He said any shooting came in response to Israeli “provocations.” “It was obvious that the Israelis would create pretexts to prevent the withdrawal from the heart of Bethlehem and other Palestinian cities now under their occupation.”
