Victims in Israeli Strike Include 2 Children
Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a Palestinian vehicle driving through a West Bank village today, killing three men inside and two children who were outside their home.

Israelis also arrested the West Bank political leader of the militant Hamas movement in Ramallah, and Jewish settlers reported that a gunman had infiltrated the settlement of Braha, south of Nablus, seriously wounding three settlers before he was killed. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the Braha infiltration.

According to Israeli accounts of the helicopter raid, the primary target was a leader of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a radical wing of Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement. The man escaped. Israel did not give his name, but Palestinians said it was Suliman Abu-Sayad.

Both Israelis and Palestinians said those killed were Rafat Daraghmeh, 29, a member of the Brigades, and two youths ages 16 and 17, neither of them combatants. Palestinians said another member, Jihad Sauafta, 27, had been severely wounded.

Another missile struck a nearby house, killing a 10-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl and wounding six bystanders, Palestinians said. Other accounts said the children had been killed by the exploding car.

Witnesses said an Israeli helicopter hovered over the villages of Tubas and Tayasir, south of Jenin, through much of the day. Then, about 5 p.m., two Apache attack helicopters fired the missiles, obliterating a black Mitsubishi sedan as it approached Tubas

The helicopter attack prompted immediate condemnations from the Palestinians. "I condemn this brutal act of murder," said Saeb Erekat, a minister in the Palestinian Authority. "This is a continuous policy of assassinations conducted by the Israeli government that aims to undermine all efforts to revive the hope of peace."

The mayor of Tubas, Diab Abu Khezaran, said, "What is the sense of hitting a building with no militants inside, only civilians?"

The attacks occurred as an American envoy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield, held a first round of talks with Palestinians, including the Palestinian Authority's interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, and Nabil Shaath, the minister of planning and cooperation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/international/middleeast/01MIDE.html