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Palestinian gunman kills settler in W.Bank, is shot
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-13 21:32
A Palestinian gunman killed a Jewish settler in an ambush outside a
settlement in the West Bank on Friday before being shot and killed by security
guards from the enclave, Israeli officials said.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by an armed group in Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement that also carried out a bombing at an
Israeli army checkpoint outside Jerusalem that caused both Palestinian and
Israeli casualties.
An Israeli settler
who was shot by Palestinian gunman receives medical assistance in a
Jerusalem hospital, August 13, 2004. The settler died of wounds suffered
in a Palestinian militant ambush in the West Bank on Friday.
[Reuters] | An army spokeswoman said the gunman
sneaked into an area close to the rear gate of the settlement of Itamar and
fired on a car driven by a settler patrolling the perimeter fence.
"The assailant, armed with an AK-47 (assault rifle) shot the Israeli
civilian, took the civilian's own assault rifle out of the car and tried to run
away," the spokeswoman said.
"Other security guards nearby rushed immediately to the scene and shot the
assailant dead."
Violence in an almost four-year-old Palestinian revolt in territories Israel
took in a 1967 war has churned on even as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
pursues a plan to pull out of Gaza while holding onto major settlements in the
West Bank.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in a phone call to Reuters in Nablus, said it
carried out the attack and described it as revenge for relentless Israeli army
raids into the city in which many of its cell commanders have been killed
recently.
A Brigades spokesman said the gunman was Youssef Ahmed Hassan Hanani, 25,
from Beit Furik village east of Nablus. He said a second gunman escaped the area
unhurt.
HARDLINE SETTLEMENT OVERLOOKS MILITANT
BASTION
Nablus has been the largest West Bank base of Fatah and Islamist militancy
throughout the revolt and has been subject to many Israeli incursions, arrest
sweeps and blockades.
Itamar is an enclave of ultra-nationalist Jews on a hill overlooking Nablus
and has been attacked by militants before.
Israeli police said on Friday they had arrested a third Palestinian over a
botched bombing at an army roadblock on Jerusalem's fringes in which two
Palestinians were killed and 19 people wounded including six Israeli policemen.
Two other suspects were picked up earlier.
The al-Aqsa Brigades said their target had been Israeli security forces and
apologized for the Palestinian casualties.
Also on Friday, Israeli tanks and troops thrust into a district of Gaza City
next to a Jewish settlement and wounded four Palestinians in exchanges of fire,
witnesses said.
Violence has surged in Gaza since Sharon unveiled his "Disengagement Plan"
entailing a pullout of 8,000 settlers from among 1.3 million Palestinians in the
teeming coastal strip.
Aides to Sharon said he was furious at remarks by his deputy on Thursday that
Israel would eventually have to dismantle many settlements in the West Bank
rather than just four tiny ones out of 120 as now envisaged.
They said Vice Premier Ehud Olmert's comments that Israel would have to quit
much more of the West Bank to avoid ruling a large Palestinian population and
preserve its status as a democratic Jewish state did not represent Sharon's
views.
One aide said "disengagement" remained "the only plan on the table and we are
not talking about anything beyond that."
Palestinians fear Sharon's plan to consolidate Israel's grip over large West
Bank enclaves where most of the 240,000 settlers live will deny them land needed
for a viable state.
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