MIDDLE EAST: Bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli army near Gaza border evacuated to hospital
Record ID:
1547864
MIDDLE EAST: Bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli army near Gaza border evacuated to hospital
- Title: MIDDLE EAST: Bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli army near Gaza border evacuated to hospital
- Date: 27th December 2009
- Summary: VARIOUS OF PEOPLE CARRYING BODIES ON STRETCHERS INTO HOSPITAL / PEOPLE HUGGING, ONE OF THEM CRYING IN HOSPITAL CORRIDOR VARIOUS OF PEOPLE CARRYING BODIES ON STRETCHERS
- Embargoed: 10th January 2010 21:09
- Keywords:
- Topics: War / Fighting
- Reuters ID: LVA3FH1I5J71SU7AR4U1NLY699IJ
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
- Story Text: Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians on Saturday (December 26) in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the bloodiest outbreak of violence in months.
Three of those killed belonged to a militant group within Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, which Israel accused of perpetrating a roadside shooting that killed a Jewish settler two days earlier.
An official in Abbas's government accused Israel of igniting a "grave escalation." A militant leader threatened to exact revenge, charging Israel would now "open the gates of hell".
In Gaza, soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians near a border fence they suspected of trying to infiltrate from the Hamas-ruled territory. A Hamas security source said the three were shot as they collected scrap metal.
Their bodies were later evacuated to a local hospital.
Israeli armoured vehicles entered the West Bank city of Nablus before dawn, when soldiers surrounded homes where members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group of Abbas's Fatah group were inside.
The troops shot and killed three militants suspected of shooting to death a Jewish settler in a roadside ambush on Thursday (December 24).
The settler, a father of seven, was the first Israeli killed in a Palestinian attack in eight months, making it an incident that tested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's latest easing of travel restrictions for Palestinians.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad strongly condemned the day's violence.
"This operation represents...hostility and dangerous escalation. It's impossible to understand it other than as a policy to target the situation of independence and security which has been achieved by the awareness of our citizens in all the area, here in Nablus and all the areas. This is a sad day for us in Palestine - Three martyrs in Nablus, in a clear operation of murder. It's impossible to understand it other than as a the targeting of the security situation and the independence which has been achieved. And three martyrs also in Bet Hanoun area (in Gaza)," Fayyad said as he came to meet relatives of the militants who were shot dead in Nablus.
Israeli army Colonel Itzik Bar, the regional brigade commander, said that the militants were shot after they refused to surrender.
"We operated in a very focused and professional manner. It was an operation in which we had to detain the terrorists. When they refused to cooperate and didn't turn themselves in, the troops operated according to open fire regulations, and made it possible for whoever wanted to turn themselves in.Those who didn't turn themselves in were shot by our troops," Bar said in a media briefing held at a West Bank checkpoint.
A spokesman for Israeli forces, Major Peter Lerner, said that the militants had not shot at the troops, but soldiers had acted assuming each was "armed and dangerous." Lerner also added that one of the dead was found holding a gun and that the wife of another had been wounded in the leg.
The violent upsurge threatened to derail Western-backed security cooperation forged between Abbas's police force and Israel, and potentially tip a Palestinian power struggle against his Fatah movement, in Islamist Hamas's favour.
The death toll in Saturday's incidents was the highest in any Israeli-Palestinian confrontation in the West Bank since before the Gaza offensive, and the worst fatalities along the Gaza border since March. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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