OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 21 September — Israeli bulldozers yesterday started systematically demolishing what remains of Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters as aides to the Palestinian leader appealed in vain for global preventive action.
After a day of dynamiting most structures in the compound, Israeli engineers late at night began demolishing part of a building housing Arafat’s offices and lodgings and Palestinian officials warned the structure could collapse on their besieged president.
Palestinian witnesses in the West Bank city said armored vehicles were tearing down the bridge linking the two sections of the building, as soldiers fired at figures scrambling across it. An explosion was also heard in the area. Palestinian officials inside the building said by telephone they feared the building could collapse, endangering Arafat, who has been besieged since Israeli tanks closed in on Thursday night following two bombings.
Arafat himself telephoned Prince Abdullah, the regent, and Jordanian King Abdallah to keep them abreast of the situation on the ground. “President Arafat called Prince Abdullah to inform him of the dangerous situation in the occupied Palestinian territories due to the escalation of the Israeli aggression and the siege imposed on the Palestinian presidency,” the Saudi Press Agency reported. Prince Abdullah relayed to Arafat “the support of Saudi Arabia and its people for the brotherly Palestinian people in the face of the Israeli aggression,” it said.
At least 19 Palestinians surrendered yesterday to the troops besieging the compound. They came out with their hands up and were bound and blindfolded by waiting soldiers. A Palestinian official holed up with Arafat said the men had surrendered for fear of the building collapsing on them. Some of the Palestinians were injured. An Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian policeman inside Arafat’s offices. The policeman, a 26-year-old from the Gaza Strip, was killed as he stood by a window inside the building.
Separately, four Palestinians — a man and a woman and two teenagers — were killed during a series of Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip.
