RAMALLAH West Bank | Wednesday
ALMOST 40 people died Tuesday as the Israeli army launched its biggest operation in years and suspected Palestinian gunmen hit back in northern Israel, ahead of a US mission to halt the relentless bloodletting.
The death toll from the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation soared over the 1 500 mark.
With former US general Anthony Zinni due in the region Thursday, the Israeli army occupied most of the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority’s capital, killing five Palestinians.
The invasion came on the heels of an overnight battle in a Gaza Strip refugee camp that left 17 Palestinians dead. Another eight Palestinians were killed in scattered violence around the West Bank and Gaza.
As the uprising’s worst streak of violence continued, suspected Palestinian gunmen rained bullets and grenades at traffic on a road near the Lebanese border in northern Israel, killing six Israelis before being shot dead by police.
The army said it unearthed no trace of infiltration from across the border in Lebanon after the attack in which three women and two other Israeli civilians died as well as a soldier.
Several hours after the attack, the assailants were still not identified.
Late Tuesday, three more Israelis, including a woman, were shot and wounded by Palestinian gunfire in the north of the country on the edge of the West Bank, police said.
In Ramallah, where around Israeli 100 tanks rumbled into the city at dawn Tuesday, clashes were taking places in a number of districts, including the Al-Amari refugee camp and the suburb of El-Bireh.
Tanks were on virtually every street corner, even some 100 metres from the offices of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who was told by Israel on Monday he was free to move about the Palestinian territories after being penned in the town for more than three months.
Arafat dismissed the Israeli decision in an interview broadcast on Qatar’s satellite broadcast Al-Jazeera television, saying his predicament was ”contrary to international conventions and diplomatic norms.”
On Tuesday night, clashes were still taking place at the entrance of Al-Amari and Qadura refugee camps, a press correspondent said. A military source said one Israeli soldier was wounded in the exchanges of fire in the city of Ramallah.
The Israeli army’s chief of staff, General Shaul Mofaz, said ”the current operation is the biggest since the beginning of the intifada but also the biggest in years.”
He told reporters that the aim ”was not to reoccupy Ramallah or destroy the Palestinian Authority (but) hunt down terrorists.”
The operations prompted UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to appeal to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Arafat to lead their peoples ”away from disaster.”
Today, more than ever, he said, ”you must recognise that security and a political settlement are indivisible.”
A defiant Palestinian leadership said: ”Our people will not give way in the face of (Israeli) aggression; they will defend themselves by their historic and courageous resistance.”
Earlier in the West Bank a security guard was killed by Palestinian gunmen near the Jewish settlement of Kyriat Sefer.
In the southern Gaza Strip, four Palestinians died after Israeli helicopter gunships fired on an installation of Arafat’s Force 17 bodyguard near Khan Yunis and an adjoining metal works.
In the central Gaza Strip, the army occupied the town of Wadi al-Salqa, leaving with 19 prisoners after interrogating around 100, the local mayor said.
About 2 000 Palestinians have been rounded up for interrogation in refugee camps, towns and villages in operations the army says are designed to track down ”terrorists” and hidden weapons.
The overnight battle in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip came after Palestinian militants rejected an Israeli demand to surrender.
Amid the widespread violence, six Palestinians charged with collaborating with Israel escaped from Salfit prison in the self-rule area of Nablus on the West Bank, Palestinian security sources said.
A Palestinian charged with collaboration was shot dead in Ramallah earlier the same day as the Israeli army mounted its incursion.
The escalating bloodshed prompted the United States, which has preferred to go it alone on the Middle East scene, to call for a ”concerted effort” with European and Arab countries to bring about peace.
US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice singled out a peace overture floated by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz last month, which she said recognised that ”there ought to be normalisation of relations” between the Arab world and the Israelis.
She said Zinni would have ”a kind of renewed mandate” to try to implement a ceasefire plan put together last year by US Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet. – Sapa-AFP