Nablus | West Bank, Tuesday
ISRAELI forces won cautious US praise on Tuesday by pulling out of the northern West Bank towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarem, but at the same time moved into a village in the south, killing two Palestinians in the ongoing hunt for suspected militants.
In Jenin, heavy fighting went on overnight and Israeli attacks helicopters were still firing a steady stream of rockets into the refugee camp which has been the scene of bloody clashes for almost a week.
In Doha, the Arab satellite television channel Al-Jazeera said 11 Israeli soldiers had been killed in overnight combat, although under Israel’s strict military censorship the reports could not be verified.
Nine of them died in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, Al-Jazeera said without giving details.
One hundred Palestinian men, women and children were trapped inside a builidng in the Jenin camp and appealing to aid groups for help as they came under Israeli fire, a camp resident said.
”One hundred Palestinians have been under fire for over four hours, we tried to talk to the army but they shot at us,” Abu Hussein told AFP by phone. Helicopters could be heard in the background flying low.
”We can’t do anything but call human rights organizations everywhere we can think of,” he added.
Abu Hussein explained that the people, among whom were ”20 women and many children,” had taken refuge in the building ”after their houses were bulldozed by the army.”
An AFP reporter close to Jenin, on the Israeli side of the Green Line dividing Israel from the West Bank, saw four Apache helicopters fire six missiles into the camp within a space of 20 minutes.
Palestinian officials said Israel had appealed to the Palestinian leadership for a truce in the battle-scarred camp to evacuate the wounded, but said the leadership had told the Jewish state to address itself to Yasser Arafat, pinned down by the army in his Ramallah offices.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, receiving an angry Arab response as he tours the region before heading to Jerusalem on Friday, told Israel the pullback from the two towns was ”encouraging” but not enough.
”Let us hope that this is not a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but the beginning of a pullback,” Powell said after meeting Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz in Morocco.
Israel said it would tighten its encirclement of the two towns, which lie right on the border and are seen as springboards for bloody anti-Israel attacks.
Palestinian local government minister Saeb Erakat said the operation was just window-dressing and made no real difference.
But as it pulled out of the towns, where the army said it had completed its task of dismantling extremist grousp, Israeli troops and armour piled into the village of Dura near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Two Palestinians were killed in the raid, sources in the village said, apparently hit by Israeli helicopter fire as they walked out of a mosque.
Israel has also occupied villages scattered across the West Bank in its 12-day sweep for militant groups which has sent shockwaves through the region, causing tensions to soar and sending oil prices in a sharp spike.
In the Old City of Nablus, the scene of heavy fighting in recent days, the Israeli army said it had subdued resistance and taken control of the winding streets of the Casbah, where it said it had found several explosives labs and even a home-made Qassam rocket stashed in a mosque.
Meanwhile in Bethlehem, to the south of Jerusalem, the Israeli army again called on around 200 Palestinian gunmen and civilians besieged for the past week in Bethlehem’s Nativity Church to surrender.
Speaking through a loudhailer, a soldier asked in Arabic for Palestinians to surrender and gave a phone number for people wishing to leave the church.
Besides Palestinian gunmen, some civilians are also trapped inside the church or in adjacent convents, in addition to some 30 Franciscan monks.
Exchanges of fire were rare on Monday morning around the church, which stands over the cave where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born.
In the Gaza Strip, which has so far been untouched by Israel’s Operation Defensive Wall — launched on March 29 after a wave of suicide bombings — Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into a Palestinian autonomous zone in the south overnight, opening fire and injuring at least one person.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has authorised four senior Palestinian officials to meet Yasser Arafat in the West Bank headquarters where is besieged by troops, Israeli public radio reported on Tuesday.
Sharon will allow top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, Palestine Liberation Organisation number two Mahmud Abbas, Colonel Mohammad Dahlan, the head of Palestinian security in the Gaza Strp and Ahmed Qorei, head of the Palestinian parliament, to meet the Palestinian leader, the radio reported.
The decision was made following a meeting between Sharon and US envoy Anthony Zinni on Monday.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday said he hoped to talk with Arafat during his current regional tour. – Sapa