OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 29 November 2002 — At least six Israelis were killed in a shooting and grenade attack at a crowded polling station during Israel’s Likud party leadership primary yesterday, a police spokesman said. Another 21 people were wounded, three of them seriously, the radio quoted police sources as saying.

Five Israelis died in the initial spree and the sixth victim succumbed to his wounds five hours later. Likud central committee member Mordechai Abraham was also killed in the shooting.

In Hebron, Israeli Army fire killed a three-year-old Palestinian boy yesterday, Palestinian medical sources told AFP.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, defeated Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an election for the leadership of the ruling Likud party, according to television exit polls late yesterday. Computer projections also showed Sharon won by a big margin.

A Channel One exit poll gave Sharon 61 percent of the votes compared to 37 percent support for Netanyahu among the 305,000 Likud members. Channel Two put the figures at 58 percent for Sharon and 40.5 percent for Netanyahu.

Two Palestinians, who sprayed automatic gunfire and threw grenades at people queuing up to vote, were shot dead by police, spokesman Ofer Sivan old AFP.

Israel threatened a tough response saying, “The war of terrorism they launched against us leaves us with no other choice but to destroy them before they destroy us,” Israeli government spokesman Raanan Gissin told AFP.

In a press conference later, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Arabs of trying to influence the campaign for the general elections in Israel in two months. “Terror will not dictate the agenda of the State of Israel,” he said.

“There is no doubt that one of the reasons for this upsurge in terrorist activity is probably an effort to try and disrupt the electoral process in Israel and Israeli democracy,” Gissin charged. Sharon held security consultations with top ministers, including Netanyahu after the attacks in Kenya, Israeli public radio reported.

The gunmen went on a shooting spree in the town of Beit Shean, a bastion of support for the rightist Likud party close to borders with the West Bank and Jordan, witnesses said. The attack caused panic among Likud voters and activists gathered at the polling office. “There were rounds and rounds of fire,” Udi, a witness, said in a radio interview. “We have friends and neighbors who were killed.”

The turnout for the primaries of Israel’s right-wing Likud party had only reached 30 percent at 8:00 p.m. (1800 GMT), following the shooting attack. Finance Minister Silvan Shalom told Israeli public television that the low turnout could be explained by the fact that “the people are scared of going out to vote following the Beit Shean attack.”

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, said it carried out the raid to avenge the killings on Tuesday of two Palestinian commanders in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. But the Palestinian leadership issued a statement in Gaza City, condemning the attack and extending condolences to the families of the victims.

“The situation here is that they infiltrated and fired indiscriminately hundreds of bullets and hit many people,” said the town’s mayor, Pini Kabalo.

Witnesses said one of the Palestinians wore an explosive belt but it did not detonate. Police said one of the attackers tossed a hand grenade that failed to explode.

Police said the Palestinians targeted the polling office where Likud voters were casting ballots.

Among the wounded were three adult sons of former Likud Foreign Minister David Levy, who lives in the town.