JENIN, West Bank, 22 April 2007 — Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinian fighters and a policeman in the occupied West Bank yesterday in the worst flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence in several weeks. In the most deadly incident, an Israeli undercover unit killed three armed fighters while they were driving in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, local Palestinian security sources said.
An Israeli Army spokeswoman said that Israeli troops opened fire after being shot at from the car. They confirmed hitting the three men. The spokeswoman later added that arms and munitions had been found in the car, which was riddled with bullets.
A hospital source in Jenin identified two of the dead as belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. The third man was identified as a member of Islamic Jihad.
Earlier in the day, Israeli troops operating in a village near Jenin shot dead a Palestinian policeman. An Israeli Army spokeswoman said troops operating in the village had come under attack from Palestinian militants. “(The troops) noticed an armed militant firing from the top of a building and identified hitting him,” the spokeswoman said.
Palestinian witnesses in the village said the policeman was not involved in the fighting and he was shot through the window of his house. An aide to Abbas said Israel’s actions in Jenin were endangering the president’s efforts to expand a shaky cease-fire from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.
“This is dangerous aggression and it will lead to instability at a time when the Palestinian Authority is making great efforts to maintain a truce. We urge the international community to intervene immediately to stop Israel’s aggression,” the aide, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said.
“We condemn this,” said Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Abbas. “This undermines our efforts to bring about a cessation of hostilities. As such, I believe this is very very bad.”
The Israeli forces has declared a full closure on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, to remain in effect until after Israel’s “Independence Day” which falls tomorrow. Palestinian people in this day commemorate the 59th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) when Zionist armed gangs occupied Palestine in 1948 and displaced its indigenous inhabitants to establish the state of Israel on 78 percent of the land of Palestine.
Israeli Army officials stressed that the army liaison office would allow Palestinians to cross into Israel via checkpoints in cases deemed “exceptional.” Likewise, representatives of international organizations, medical personnel, and religious officials would be allowed to pass the borders, Israeli Radio reported. The sources added that after the end of the celebrations the security establishment will review the closure and decide if it is to be extended or lifted.
In another incident in the West Bank, a Palestinian woman was arrested near Jericho yesterday morning after attempting to cross an Israeli checkpoint in possession of a knife. The knife was confiscated and the woman was taken in for questioning by Israeli security forces.
In Hebron, Israeli soldiers raided Ethna town and arrested six citizens, leading them into an unknown location for questioning, Palestinian sources said. Unknown armed men set off explosives at the main building and other parts of the American International School in the northern town of Beit Lahiya on pre-dawn yesterday, witnesses and security sources said.
The sources said that the assailants handcuffed the guards of the school and detonated several explosive devices after breaking into the building. The explosions caused fire and huge damage in the furniture. Fire brigades arrived at the school and put out the fires.
Head of the school, Ribihi Salim, told reporters that a big number of masked armed men arrived at the school early in the morning and tied the guards before the detonating the explosive devices.
