OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 4 March 2002 — A lone Palestinian yesterday killed seven Israeli soldiers and three settlers at a checkpoint in the West Bank. Perched above a road winding along a narrow pass near the Jewish settlement of Ofra, the man coolly picked off the soldiers and the settlers who came to their aid one after the other. He slid down the face of the hillock on the other side just when the retaliatory fire became too hot and escaped to a nearby village.
It was the second time in less than two weeks that the Israeli Army suffered a stinging defeat by the Palestinians, using different tactics to surprise soldiers at checkpoints. The army said they found the fiercely accurate weapon, an elderly bolt action rifle with limited magazine capacity dating from World War II, which the sniper left behind him. There was no claim of responsibility for the shooting.
Another soldier was killed in the Gaza Strip, while four Palestinians were killed in clashes elsewhere in the West Bank.
Israeli units later moved two kilometers into the area, Palestinian security sources said, while more than 25 tanks and other military vehicles were seen entering the Gaza Strip at Kissoufim and heading south.
Palestinian policeman Abdallah Sabet, 22, was killed when tanks shelled the autonomous village of Salfit, south of Nablus. Another policeman, Amer Zeki, 21, was killed and 18 other Palestinians were wounded, one critically, when Israeli troops and tanks went into action in Ramallah.
Two members of the Palestinian intelligence services were shot dead during a brief incursion by two Israeli tanks into the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya. Khaled Sawalha, 24, and Islam Shawahna, 26, were killed by Israeli fire in the autonomous Palestinian town, close to the border with Israel, the sources said.
Earlier Hakam Abu Aisha, a 17-year-old member of the Palestinian security forces, died of wounds received Thursday during the armyís incursion into the refugee camp of Jenin in the northern West Bank.
The deaths raised to 1,011 Palestinians killed since the intifada, or uprising, broke out in September 2000.
Israel earlier mounted a helicopter raid on the Palestinian military headquarters in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, in what an army spokesman said was a response to the attack in Jerusalem on Saturday that killed nine Israelis. There were no casualties from the Israeli attack in Bethlehem.
Israeli tanks also fired a dozen shells at an abandoned Palestinian police post in the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabaliya, while fresh clashes also erupted in the south, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said. Soldiers backed by armored vehicles were exchanging fire with Palestininans near the southern city of Khan Yunis late into the evening.
