NABLUS, West Bank, 24 November — An Israeli officer admitted yesterday that Israeli soldiers had laid the booby-trap that killed five Palestinian children on Thursday. Booby-traps were also set at several other roads used by Palestinians heading for Israeli towns, he added.
More than 30,000 Palestinians attended the funeral for five schoolboys, aged six to 14, killed in the Khan Younis refugee camp by what the Palestinian Authority had already claimed was an Israeli booby-trap. Many called for revenge.
"We urge an international investigative committee to look into the murder of innocent children and to determine Israel’s responsibility," said Palestinian Public Security Chief Abdel-Razek Majaydeh.
Israeli missiles slammed into a Palestinian car near the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, killing three people in a strike aimed at a senior member of the Hamas. Israeli sources said the apparent target of the strike was top Hamas military leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, but Palestinian officials did not have information that he was among the dead.
The three deaths brought to at least seven the number of Palestinians killed yesterday.
Earlier, a Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip and two Palestinian men died in a West Bank explosion. The men killed in the car were a Hanoud assistant, Ayman Rashid Hashaika, Hashaika’s brother from Tallouza, a village near Nablus, and a third unidentified man, Palestinian police sources and officials said. Israel has tried to kill Hanoud several times.
Nablus Governor Mahmoud Aloul said the killing was a "new crime" by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. s
"It is clear that Sharon insists on the continuation of his aggression and...in aborting all the attempts to defuse the tension," he told Reuters.
Late at night, Israeli tanks attacked a car in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, killing a woman and injuring three other passengers. "Israeli tanks opened fire with heavy machine guns and fired shells at the car, which was carrying two families, about 200 meters from the Rafah border terminal," said a senior security official, Col. Khaled Abu Ula.
Israel has murdered some 70 Palestinians it says are behind attacks on Israelis since the start of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000. The killings have been condemned internationally.
