GAZA CITY, 26 November — Israeli combat helicopters blasted three Palestinian towns and Israeli troops killed a 13-year old boy yesterday as two top US peace envoys were set to visit the region. Hours after the night raids on Palestinian security targets in Beit Lahia, Deir El-Balah and Khan Younis, in the northern, central and southern Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot and mortally wounded a 13-year-old Palestinian protester. Israeli forces also shot a pregnant woman in the stomach as she was crossing Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, Palestinian officials said.
The violence ended a period of relative calm just before the arrival of US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns and retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni to work toward a new cease-fire.
In Riyadh, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd held talks with Palestine President Yasser Arafat and reaffirmed Saudi Arabia’s support for the Palestinian people. He also denounced the assassination of Palestinians by Israeli forces.
The Saudi Press Agency said King Fahd and Arafat discussed the current situation in Palestine. "The assassinations prove that the Israeli side does not want peace," the agency quoted the king as saying.
Israel’s assassination on Friday of a senior Hamas commander Mahmud Abu Hanoud — incinerated in his car by rockets — had launched a new cycle of bloodletting, as Hamas officials promised swift and "hard" revenge. A homemade Hamas mortar killed an Israeli soldier Saturday in the central Gaza Strip Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, prompting almost immediate Israeli retaliation.
Israel’s US-made Apache helicopters swooped in pre-dawn dark across the Gaza Strip, blasting security and police offices but causing no casualties.
At the same time, Israeli tanks and bulldozers pushed into Palestinian self-rule areas in Deir El-Balah and razed three homes, forcing the residents out in their nightclothes and bulldozing the homes with all their possession inside.
The Israeli Army said it was "retaliating to earlier mortar attacks, one of which killed a soldier and wounded two others." Hamas said the attack was payback for Israel’s slaying Friday of Abu Hanoud.
In Gaza City, a Hamas rally in Abu Hanoud’s memory drew a huge crowd of 30,000 people calling for vengeance.
Hamas called on Palestinians to shun US and European peace efforts and press ahead with the armed insurrection to end Israeli occupation of their land.
Israel proudly endorsed the slaying of Abu Hanoud, ignoring a chorus of international outrage and saying it would stick to its controversial policy of hunting down and killing or arresting suspects.
The US State Department had no immediate reaction to the incendiary killings but a senior official said Washington’s general position on Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations had not changed. "We oppose targeted killings and we have made our views on this clear to the Israelis," the official said
The French Foreign Ministry denounced the killing as a "particularly unwarranted and irresponsible act at a time when violence is decreasing and parties are being called upon to begin talks again to establish a cease-fire." But Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the assassination was "par excellence, an act of legitimate self-defense." More than 60 suspects have been assassinated, as well as bystanders, since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation in September 2000.
A flood of violence rocked the West Bank over the weekend. On the edge of Bethlehem, 13-year-old Khifah Obeid died shortly after being shot in the chest as Palestinian youths stoned an Israeli Army post in protest at the deaths of five other children in the Gaza Strip last week.
