Palestinian gunmen kill four in settlement attack

Associated Press

ADORA, West Bank – Yaakov Shefi was in the synagogue for Sabbath prayers while his three young children cuddled with his wife at home. Shefi heard shots in the distance – not knowing that a Palestinian gunman had burst into his home and opened fire, wounding his wife and two of the couple’s children. The third, 5-year-old Danielle, died.

“She saw our daughter breathe her last breath,” Shefi, a policeman, recounted hoarsely, hours after the attack Saturday morning.

Palestinian gunmen burst into homes in the Jewish settlement and killed four people, raising tension in the West Bank the day before the scheduled arrival of a U.N. fact-finding team to the area.

Seven people were wounded in the attack on Adora, near Hebron, the worst on a settlement since Israel began its military campaign to crush Palestinian militants. The three gunmen escaped, but Israeli military officials said one of them was shot dead in a neighboring Arab village in a sweep launched after the shooting.

Palestinians in nearby Hebron, one of the West Bank’s largest cities, braced for an Israeli reprisal, with police abandoning stations that in the past have been targets of retaliatory strikes. In Ramallah, meanwhile, about 50 young Palestinians throwing stones battled Israeli soldiers surrounding Yasser Arafat’s besieged headquarters.

At Adora, the gunmen moved from house to house, entering two of them and firing through windows of others. Residents said the firing went on for about 45 minutes; the army said about 15 minutes.

One man shot Shiri Shefi, 29, and her three children in an upstairs bedroom, killing 5-year-old Danielle. Another attacker shot his way into a nearby home, killing Katya Greenberg, 45, in her bed and wounding her husband and 14-year-old son.

“Anyone capable of looking a 4-year-boy and a 5-year-girl in the face and then shooting them is not human,” said Yaakov Shefi.

Also killed were a male civilian and a member of the residents’ security squad, according to the army. It did not identify them further and the Adora settlement office refused to comment.

Yaakov Shefi, a policeman, said he raced home from the synagogue when he heard the shooting and saw two uniformed men. “I thought they were soldiers. I asked them, ‘What’s happening? Is everything all right?’ They opened fire at me,” he said later.

Army troops and helicopters mounted a massive manhunt for the gunmen, conducting a house-to-house search in the nearby village of Taffuh. The army said reserve soldiers spotted one of the three, fired on him and killed him.

The unidentified Palestinian was wearing an Israeli army shirt and pants, the military said. Israeli forces, it said, were searching for two other attackers.

The Adora attack was likely to only stiffen Israeli attitudes toward a U.N. team heading to the region to establish what happened in the Jenin refugee camp during the Israeli incursion. Palestinians claim a massacre occurred there, while Israel says it fought a battle against armed militias, with few civilian casualties.

Israel has expressed concern the team won’t look at the reasons for its incursion – deadly attacks on Israeli civilians.

The U.N. team’s arrival was delayed by a day until today. Sharon’s Cabinet was to meet this morning to decide on Israel’s cooperation. After initially welcoming the committee last week, Israel raised objections over its composition and mandate.

In Jenin, Palestinians displaced from homes turned to piles of concrete said they held out few hopes the team would improve their plight.

“What can they do for us?” said Ahmed Zaki. A father of 11, Zaki’s family has been sleeping at the local mosque. “Perhaps they’ll give us tents to live in.”

Meanwhile, efforts continued to end the 25-day standoff at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, where more than 200 Palestinians, including about 30 wanted militants, were surrounded by Israeli forces. The focus of negotiations centered on the fate of six men inside – whether they will be escorted to the Gaza Strip, as the Palestinians propose, or be sent into exile, as Israel demands.

Palestinians inside the church said by telephone that an Israeli sniper shot one man walking in the church courtyard Saturday, wounding him in the abdomen. He was taken from the church on a stretcher. Mourners marched in the Bethlehem funeral of a Palestinian killed in earlier fighting with soldiers around the church compound.

A Palestinian negotiator, Salah Taameri, consulted with Arafat at his besieged headquarters, then returned to Bethlehem with the Palestinian leader’s instructions to try to arrange a meeting with the Israelis.