Killings mar Israeli holiday

JERUSALEM – A Palestinian gunman broke into a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Friday and opened fire in a home where a family was marking the Jewish New Year, killing a man and a toddler and shattering Israel’s efforts to maintain calm over the holiday.

The attacker was shot and killed by soldiers guarding the settlement, said Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman. Two other Israelis also were wounded in the attack on Negahot, near the West Bank city of Hebron, he said.

Israel has accused Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of encouraging terror attacks, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Friday he was determined to “remove” Arafat one day, even at the risk of harming him.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack. In the past three years of fighting, Palestinians have repeatedly attacked Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The attack began about 9 p.m. when a Palestinian armed with an M-16 rifle infiltrated the isolated settlement, Dallal said. The man knocked on the door of one house and fatally shot a guest, a 30-year-old man, who answered the door, he said.

A young girl also was shot and her parents were slightly wounded, he said. The girl’s age was not given.

“It’s no coincidence that this attack was planned for this hour, the night of the Jewish New Year,” Dallal said. “Clearly, the people behind the attack knew they could find families at home during the holiday dinner.”

Several attacks have been carried out during Jewish holidays in the past three years, most notably the March 27, 2002, suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in the northern coastal town of Netanya that killed 29 people participating in the ritual Passover meal.

In an effort to prevent possible attacks over the holiday, the Israeli military tightened a Palestinian travel ban in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All Palestinians were banned from entering Israel, and Palestinians in most of the West Bank were barred from leaving their communities.

Thousands of police were sent to guard synagogues, parks and intersections in Israel.