In deadliest day of fighting, 33 Palestinians and six Israelis are killed

By Ibrahim Barzak

Associated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – On the deadliest day of the 17-month-old conflict, Israeli troops killed 33 Palestinians in raids of villages and refugee camps Friday. A Palestinian killed five Israeli teen-agers in an attack on dormitories and a Bible study hall in a Jewish settlement, and an Israeli soldier was killed by Palestinian gunmen in a West Bank refugee camp.

In Washington, President Bush unexpectedly announced he was sending his envoy back to the region next week to try to negotiate a cease-fire.

The Bush administration had been under pressure to take a more active role in the Middle East morass, but held back, insisting first on a period of calm. But a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that now the risks of sending envoy Anthony Zinni were considered less than the risks of “standing aloof.”

The past week has been the bloodiest since fighting erupted in September 2000, with 104 Palestinians and 35 Israelis killed. The deaths came in a string of Palestinian shooting and bombing attacks on Israeli civilians, and intense Israeli retaliation, with tanks and helicopters often firing at populated Palestinian areas.

Palestinian officials accused Israeli troops of indiscriminately killing Palestinians and said Friday’s raids were intended to sabotage Zinni’s mediation mission before it even began. The Israeli military said it was targeting strongholds of Palestinian militants involved in attacks on Israelis.

Among the Palestinians killed Friday were a Palestinian general, a hospital administrator driving to work and two children, ages 9 and 11, who were hit by bullets from a machine gun, one while he was in his home and one on the street.

Palestinian medics said that in several areas, Israeli troops prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded, and that several people were left to bleed to death. The army had no immediate comment but said in the past that Palestinians used their ambulances to smuggle weapons and gunmen.

On the Israeli side, five teen-agers were killed at their high school in the Jewish settlement of Atzmona in the Gaza Strip, in an attack by a 19-year-old Palestinian from the Islamic militant Hamas group.

The assailant, later identified as Mohammed Farhat from Gaza City, cut through the settlement’s wire fence just before midnight. He hurled a grenade into a trailer serving as a dormitory, incinerating a student in his metal-frame bunk bed.

Farhat then opened fire on a hall for studies of Jewish religious texts, killing four more teen-agers and wounding 20. The hall’s tile floor was smeared with blood, and tables and religious books were scattered across the room. Army commanders said Farhat threw six grenades and emptied nine ammunition clips in his 15-minute rampage before being gunned down by Israeli troops.

Friday’s deadliest gun battle raged in the village of Khouza in southern Gaza, in which 16 Palestinians, including a regional commander of the Palestinian security forces, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Mefraj, were killed and 55 people were wounded, Palestinians said. Fourteen of those killed were armed men.

Israeli troops fired from helicopter gunships and tanks, and at one point commandeered a Palestinian ambulance to use as cover during the raid, witnesses said. “The sky was raining with bullets from all directions,” said Hatem Abu Teir, a farmer in Khouza.

The army said the village was a “center of terrorist activity.”

Mefraj, who according to aides had participated in many battles with Israeli forces in recent months, rushed to the area after learning of the Israeli incursion. A tank shell and machine gun fire hit his car, killing him and his bodyguard, Palestinian security officials said.

Later Friday, Israeli helicopters fired four missiles at Palestinian security headquarters in the nearby town of Khan Yunis. The Palestinian police chief of Gaza, Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaidie, was in the building when he heard the helicopters approaching and got out moments before the first missile struck, his aides said. At the time, Majaidie was making preparations for the funeral of Mefraj, who was his deputy. Majaidie accused Israel of trying to kill him.

Israeli forces also attacked a Palestinian police base north of Gaza City after midnight. Gunboats fired machine guns and helicopters fired three missiles at the base, witnesses said. Five people were killed, including a rescue worker in an ambulance, doctors said.

Israeli gunfire hit a police explosives storage building, setting off blasts that could be heard all over Gaza City, witnesses said.

In fighting in the West Bank, 12 Palestinians were killed, with the heaviest gun battles reported in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern West Bank and in the Bethlehem area just south of Jerusalem.

In the Tulkarem camp, dozens of Palestinian gunmen were pinned down in alleys and homes of bystanders, surrounded on all sides by Israeli forces, including helicopter gunships firing from above. Israeli troops called on the gunmen over loudspeakers to surrender, but none came forward. In all, six Palestinians were killed in the fighting Friday, and hospital officials said Israeli troops prevented ambulances from reaching the camp to treat the wounded.

An Israeli soldier was killed in the fighting in Tulkarem camp, the army said.

Also Friday, Israeli tanks and troops entered the town of Bethlehem from two directions early Friday, witnesses said. Israeli helicopters fired at the Aida refugee camp in the town after Palestinians shot at an Israeli outpost nearby, witnesses said.

Five Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded. Among the dead were a woman bystander who was killed by shrapnel from a tank shell that hit her home, and 42-year-old Ahmed Sbeih, a hospital administrator whose car was hit by a tank shell.

In preparation for Zinni’s visit, the Israeli Cabinet was to convene Sunday to give formal approval to two U.S.-backed plans that provide a roadmap for reaching a cease-fire and resuming peace talks, Israeli government officials said.

Zinni’s mission rests on the two plans, drawn up last year by CIA chief George Tenet and an international commission led by former Sen. George Mitchell.

Israel has said in the past it supported the proposals, but the Cabinet never formally approved them. Under the Mitchell recommendations, which spell out confidence-building steps toward resuming peace talks, Israel would freeze Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.