OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 10 April — Israel suffered its worst single-day casualty in 18 months of intifada yesterday when 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in heavy fighting in a Jenin refugee camp. Palestinians said they captured Israeli soldiers wounded in the fighting.
Palestinian officials said Israel had appealed to the Palestinian leadership for a truce in the battle-scarred camp to evacuate its dead and wounded. They said the Israelis were told to take it up with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who has been under siege in his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah since the Israeli blitz was first launched.
Israel received a similar response to its demand for the captured soldiers’ return. Ryad Al-Arida, interviewed over the telephone on Future TV, said the soldiers were captured armed. He did not specify how many of them were captured.
The 13 Israeli reservist soldiers were killed in a well-planned ambush. A first group was killed when a booby-trapped building blew up as they entered it, and the rest were mown down by Palestinian fighters as they ran to their comrades’ rescue, an army spokesman said. Seven other soldiers were wounded, at least one of them seriously, in the incident at the camp, the scene of the heaviest fighting in Israel’s 12-day offensive.
Late at night. Israeli warplanes started bombing pockets of stubborn Palestinian resistance in Nablus. US-made F-16 fighter bombers blasted the Al-Yasmina district of Nablus’ historic Casbah or Old City. It was the first time that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon deployed his warplanes since March 29.
The Jenin ambush was a shock to a military that prides itself on its prowess and minimal casualties, but which has been accused by Palestinians of killing untold numbers of people in its onslaught into Jenin, shut off to the outside world.
The Palestinian resistance in Jenin has won grudging admiration in Israel. Israeli public radio, quoting security sources, said hundreds of Palestinian fighters in the camp were confined to an area measuring just 70 meters by 70 meters. It said they were led by the Islamic Jihad’s Jenin chief, Mahmud Tawalbeh, who was freed from the town’s prison in February by armed Palestinians.
Residents of the camp said the Jenin fighters had vowed to fight it out to the last man. Residents contacted by phone said Israeli Army bulldozers had razed dozens of houses to open up roads for their armored personnel carriers in the cramped streets of the camp. They said those who refused to quit their condemned homes were buried by the bulldozers, and warned that the death toll could prove to be very high once rescue services are finally allowed in.
The fighting overshadowed US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to Cairo where he said he would meet with Arafat later this week. Powell, who had previously said he would meet Arafat “if circumstances permit”, was speaking after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the second leg of a tense Middle East tour intended to help end the mounting violence.
After the Palestinian ambush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said his 12-day-old offensive against Palestinian cities would continue. Hours earlier, he had told Powell he was committed to withdrawing as quickly as possible.
Earlier in the day the Israeli Army, under intense US pressure, pulled out of Qalqilya and Tulkarm but raided another village and kept a tight grip on other Palestinian-ruled areas. Powell told reporters his itinerary would now take him to Spain and then to Jerusalem, “where I am looking forward to conversations with the prime minister (Ariel Sharon), and I intend to meet with Chairman Arafat”.
Powell, who has been greeted with anger in Arab capitals as he toured the region, told Israel the withdrawal from the two towns was “encouraging” but not enough. “Let us hope that this is not a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but the beginning of a pullback,” Powell said.
The European Union also dismissed Israel’s partial withdrawal from Palestinian areas as too little, and demanded an immediate cease-fire to keep the Middle East peace process alive. Momentum appeared to be gathering in the 15-nation bloc, snubbed by Israel in its bid to negotiate an end to the Israeli military offensive in the West Bank, for at least consideration of whether to slap trade sanctions on the Jewish state.
EU president Spain said it would convene a meeting to review an association pact that gives Israel preferential trade terms, and members of the European Parliament stepped up calls for the agreement to be suspended.
European Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten told a European Parliament debate on the crisis that EU foreign ministers meeting next Monday “will want to consider the gravity of the situation and discuss how we can make our concern felt in Israel”.
