OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 20 February 2003 — Israeli forces roared into Gaza City and Nablus in the early hours of yesterday in large-scale raids that left 13 Palestinians dead, while a 14th victim was claimed by a car bomb.
In addition to the 13 killed by the Israeli forces, an activist in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in a car explosion in the town of Kabatyeh, near the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
The exact cause of the blast was not immediately clear, but Palestinians claimed it was another Israeli assassination.
In an apparent retaliation for the Gaza incursion, activists fired four Kassem rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot near the border with Gaza during the afternoon. A 35-year-old man was reported to have suffered serious wounds to the head and the chest.
Eleven of the Palestinian fatalities occurred in Gaza bringing the death toll of Palestinians to 25 since Sunday.
In a statement yesterday the Palestinian Authority condemned what it called “the programmed Israeli massacres against defenseless Palestinians”. It called on the international community to hurry to protect the Palestinian people who it said were “suffering from the intensified and escalated Israeli military aggression”.
The Gaza raid, which lasted nearly seven hours, began around midnight, when about 40 Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and troops rolled into the northern and eastern neighborhoods of the city, while Apache attack helicopters flew overhead.
Palestinian security officials said the aim of the Israeli raid was to detain fighters and destroy their houses and metal workshops. Israel has said they are used to make mortars and other weapons. Residents reported hearing explosions near several workshops.
Palestinian medical sources said that most of those killed in Gaza were “innocent civilians” and discounted Israeli statements that activists had opened fire on the Israeli forces.
Israeli reports said the soldiers had destroyed four buildings in which 32 lathes were found.
The two casualties in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, were a 32-year-old bakery worker and 16-year-old teenager, both shot by Israeli troops.
The troops were concentrating on the area near Casbah, conducting house-to-house searches. Casbah was placed under curfew and troops took up positions in several buildings including two schools.
Meanwhile, Russia expressed its “profound concern” yesterday at a massive Israeli raid on Gaza City overnight.
“The latest outbreak of violence and the loss of human life evokes profound concern in Moscow,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement, noting that the events come amid “the apparent emergence of a prospect of normalization” in the region.
The Palestinian leadership called on the UN Security Council to condemn the raid.
Yakovenko cited as positive “Palestinian measures in the area of security” and “the creation of a post of prime minister in the framework of inter-Palestinian reform,” along with “high-level Israeli-Palestinian contacts.”
