- Title: WEST BANK: ISRAELI TANKS HAVE RAIDED A COASTAL VILLAGE KILLING FOUR PALESTINIANS
- Date: 30th August 2002
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) AL-ZAHAR SAYING "If the civilian Palestinians are killed, all the blood like that I think it's our right to defend ourselves and to attack any civilian everywhere at the occuppied territories".
- Embargoed: 14th September 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: GAZA AND RAMALLAH, WEST BANK
- City:
- Country: Palestinian Territories
- Topics: General,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA5H61PJ50UKIV8PJZY7PS86JKL
- Story Text: Israeli tanks have raided a coastal village in the Gaza Strip overnight, firing several tank shells at a house and killing four Palestinians in the second raid on the area in as many days.
The consecutive raids on the Sheikh Ijleen village south of Gaza City and Israel's cancellation of security talks with the Palestinians on Wednesday strained a fragile arrangement for reaching a step-by-step truce after 23 months of violence.
On news of the attack in Sheikh Ijleen, family members and neighbours rushed to the Gaza City hospital, some embracing one another and weeping along its corridors. One woman fainted as she entered the hospital reception area where the dead were rolled in on stretchers, lying on sheets soaked in blood.
Hospital officials confirmed that four people had been killed from the al-Hajeen family, including Ruwaida, 55, and her two sons, Ashraf, 23, and Nihad, 17. The fourth person killed was a cousin of the family, Mohammed, 20.
"Last night, we got ready for bed, the boys on one side and my wife and the girls on the other. We were lying there almost asleep, the tanks not too far from us on a small hill close to the house. They shot three tank shells at us. They shot at the boys. And my wife. The boys were here, under that tree," Othman al-Hajeen whose family was killed in the raid said.
Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer expressed regret on Thursday for the killings.
The Israeli defence ministry said in a statement that Ben-Eliezer had ordered the army to "present him forthwith with its findings on the incident and conclusions for the future.
"Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer expresses regret at the incident in which Palestinian innocents in the Gaza Strip were killed as a result of Israeli army fire," the statement said.
An Israeli military source said earlier the army's assault on the village of Sheikh Ijleen was spurred by "suspicious movements of a number of people" in an area barred to Palestinians near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim. "Soldiers fired at them," the source said.
Hundreds took to the streets of Gaza on Thursday (August 29) and joined the funeral march for members of the al-Hajeen family.
The raid on Sheikh Ijleen was the second consecutive army strike on the area, close to the heavily guarded Jewish settlement Netzarim. Israeli forces launched a strike by sea, land and air on Tuesday in what security sources said was an attempt to thwart an arms smuggling operation.
The militant Palestinian organisation Hamas vowed on Thursday to mount further attacks on Israeli civilians to avenge the killings.
"Members of one family were killed in cold blood," senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar told Reuters as he stood beside the bodies of the dead in the morgue of Gaza's main hospital.
"When there are killings of Palestinian civilians, Israel can expect killings of its civilians."
A video recording of an exploding roadside bomb was distributed by Hamas on Thursday. Hamas said the bomb blew up next to an Israeli army patrol. The Israeli army denied the claim.
Hamas is the main organisation behind a wave of suicide bombings on Israeli targets during the 23-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat condemned the violence saying it undermined all peace efforts.
"This is a deliberate crime that aims to sabotage the peace efforts made by our friends, the Quartet, and to sabotage the Arab peace initiative that was adopted by the Beirut summit," Arafat said.
On Wednesday (August 28) Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer called off security talks with Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel-Razzak al-Yahya, citing a mortar attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza the previous night.
The two ministers were to discuss firming up a gradual ceasefire reached over a week ago which has pulled Israeli troops out of the West Bank city of Bethlehem but has yet to ease a military clampdown in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians blame Israel for freezing the "Gaza-Bethlehem First" arrangement, but Israel maintains it cannot lift closures until Palestinian security forces deploy to rein in militants waging a 23-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.
Israeli forces remain in six West Bank cities and some towns occupied in June after a series of Palestinian suicide bombings. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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