OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 7 February 2003 — Bloodshed hit the occupied territories yesterday as eight people were killed, including two Israeli soldiers struck down in a firefight. Six of those killed were Palestinians and Arabs gunned down by Israeli troops.
Two armed Palestinians were shot dead after they ambushed Israeli troops at a position on the southern outskirts of Nablus, a northern city which like most of the West Bank has been occupied since last June.
The ambush and subsequent firefight killed two Israeli soldiers, Lt. Amir Ben-Aryeh, 21, and Staff Sgt. Idan Suzin, 20. A third was wounded.
A caller to AFP in Nablus claimed the attack in the name of both the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The slain armed Palestinians were later identified as Anan Hanani, 19, of the PFLP, and Ahmed Hamed, 20, of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades.
Hours earlier, an Israeli helicopter gunship rained down heavy machine gun fire on a hospital compound in eastern Gaza City, killing two male nurses as they ran outside to see what was happening and calm their terrified patients, a hospital statement said.
They said Omar Hassan, 26, and Abed Al-Karim Loubed, 41, were killed in the compound surrounding the Al-Wafaa hospital for the elderly where they both worked in the Al-Shajiyeh district.
Several bullets also penetrated the hospital building, but no one else was wounded. The army was investigating the killings, while military sources admitted choppers had opened fire on “open spaces” during Gaza operations overnight.
Later yesterday, an Arab man was shot dead by Israeli security forces after attacking a border policeman in the north of the country near Umm El-Fahm, a densely populated Israeli Arab city just outside the West Bank, Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman told AFP.
Another unarmed Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces yesterday while walking on a road near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
Palestinian villagers in Djbarah, near Tulkarm, said the man was shot by soldiers during a roadside security check.
Around 20 Palestinians suspected of links to various groups were arrested in night operations in the West Bank, the army said.
Twelve were arrested in the Bethlehem area and seven near Hebron, both in the southern West Bank. Three were captured in Ramallah and two more in Qalqilya, in the north. For their part, Palestinian security officials said the army launched major search for militants in seven villages around the town of Jenin in the far north of the West Bank.
Occasional shots were heard in some of the villages where the soldiers were carrying out house-to-house searches, witnesses told AFP.
The villages were Yamun, Arakeh, Siyat Al-Harasiya, Rumena, Taibeh, Anin Et Zbuba, the officials said.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday President George W. Bush is ready to play a more active role in efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
“I know the president intends to take a more active role in finding a way forward with the Middle East peace process,” Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Agencies)
