As Settlers Pray for the Dead, Israel Weighs Retaliation

The Israeli Army described the attack as a carefully planned assault on Jewish settlers returning from Friday night prayers, a trap laid to draw security forces into an exposed alleyway. None of the worshipers were among the dead, Israeli officials said today.

They said that those killed were five border police soldiers, four regular army soldiers — two of them officers — and three civilian security guards from the nearby Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba.

The commander who died, Colonel Dror Weinberg, was the highest-ranking officer to be shot dead in the conflict, which has lasted more than two years.

Israeli forces responding to the ambush killed three Palestinians, whom they identified as the attackers.

The Islamist group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it retaliation for Israel's killing a week ago of its local leader in the West Bank city of Jenin. It was the deadliest assault on Israelis in Hebron in the two-year conflict.

The ambush was a devastating blow to the Israeli Army, which only on Friday morning had described Hebron, with the rest of the southern West Bank, as at least temporarily calm and under control.

Before the attack on Friday, the Israeli Army said it was seeking to ease restrictions on Palestinians, at least in the southern West Bank, as they celebrated the holiday of Ramadan. That step appeared sure to be reversed.

Before dawn today, Israeli helicopters fired rockets at a metal shop in Gaza City that the Israeli Army said was used to make weapons.

Today, army bulldozers leveled the orchard here where the Palestinians laid their ambush.

The attack came on a tranquil, moonlit night along a lonely stretch of road. Shortly after 7 p.m., Jewish settlers were returning from prayer at the Cave of the Patriarchs, revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of Abraham. Accompanied by a jeep from the border police, they walked along a dusty road known as "worshipers' lane" toward Kiryat Arba, at Hebron's edge.

The road, which passes through the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron, dips into a gully, which until today was planted with olive trees, before climbing past Palestinian homes toward a gate to Kiryat Arba.

As the security guards entered the alleyway, they ran into a wall of gunfire. The colonel, whose name was not immediately released, then arrived at the scene.

Soldiers said the colonel could be heard giving orders over the radio as his jeep entered the alleyway. He was also shot to death. Soldiers at the scene said the death of their commander contributed to the chaos of the continuing firefight, which they said lasted for more than two hours.

The civilian chief of Kiryat Arba's security was also killed, as was one officer of the border police, Israeli officials said.

Eleven of the 14 wounded were reported to be soldiers or policemen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/middleeast/17MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top