OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 30 November 2002 — Israel is planning cross-border military strikes as well as a long hunt by stealth once its Mossad intelligence agency delivers its verdict on who was responsible for Thursday’s attacks.
Intelligence sources say the most likely targets in retaliation for the attacks, which cost 16 lives but came close to killing hundreds, are in Lebanon and possibly Somalia and Yemen.
But the Israeli government is waiting for confirmation from Mossad security agents in Kenya that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the bombing and missile attack, and to find out whether Hezbullah or any other group was also involved.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops shot dead one of the Palestinians who opened fire on Thai laborers yesterday and wounded two of them in a southern Gaza Strip Jewish settlement, a military spokesman said.
The army demolished the houses of two Palestinians who gunned down six Israelis at a polling station in northern Israel on Thursday, Palestinian security sources said.
Troops also arrested eight of their brothers, they added. The houses of Omar Mohammed Abu Rub, 19, and Yusef Mohammed Taleb Abu Rub, 20, in the West Bank village of Jalbun, near Jenin, were dynamited by Israeli troops.
