Thursday, February 20, 2003

Israel Kills 12 Arabs in Clashes in West Bank and Gaza
Violence spiraled through the day. After Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza, Hamas broke a three-week lull in rocket attacks and fired at least three rockets from northern Gaza at the Israeli town of Sderot, wounding an Israeli man.

In the West Bank city of Jenin, a Palestinian militant from Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction was killed when his car mysteriously exploded. His organization, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, called his death an Israeli assassination.

In keeping with the pattern of such incursions, Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza after a few hours, but in Nablus they settled in for a longer mission, imposing a curfew on its old city as soldiers searched houses.

Gunshots and percussion grenades cracked as boys and young men, in the smoke of burning tires, smashed cinder blocks into smaller stones to fling at armored vehicles.

Two Palestinians were shot dead here, and 20 were wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said. The army said soldiers had fired at one man who flung a firebomb at them and at another who fled and ignored warning shots after being ordered to stop.

Palestinians identified one of the dead as a 16-year-old stone-thrower and the other as Nasser Abu Safiyeh, 32, who was walking from prayers with his 93-year-old father, Mustafa Abu Safiyeh. "The blood of my son remained on the ground, like the blood of four sheep slaughtered together," Mr. Abu Safiyeh said.

Today's violence followed separate meetings in London by Palestinian and Israeli delegations with representatives of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia about possibly resuming a peace effort.

Both in northern Gaza and here, officials of Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority have recently been working to reduce the violence, Israeli officials have said. They credited Palestinian security forces with stopping the firing of rockets at Israel, but discounted that as a small step intended only to forestall Israeli military movements into Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/international/middleeast/20MIDE.html

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