JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Israeli-Palestinian confrontations surged and seven people were killed in the bloody aftermath of the assassination of a far-right Israeli cabinet minister.The bloodshed and threats by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of tougher retribution could deal another blow to U.S.-led peace efforts that Washington had hoped could boost Arab support for its offensive in Afghanistan.
Three Palestinians, including Atef Abayat, a Resistance leader on Israel's most-wanted list, were killed on Thursday in a blast that tore through a car in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. (Read photo caption below)
In the early hours of Friday, Israeli forces moved about 100 yards into Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem during a battle with Resistance men which at least four Palestinians were wounded, witnesses said. The Israeli occupation army had no immediate comment.
Palestinians said Israel killed Abayat, a commander of militants belonging to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in the biblical city.
Israel said Abayat was responsible for the deaths of five Israelis and suggested he was preparing a car bomb that detonated prematurely.
After the explosion, Resistance men in the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala fired at Gilo, a Jewish settlement which Israel regards as a neighborhood of Jerusalem. Occupation soldiers returned fire as tracer bullets marked the revival of a battlefront dormant for weeks.
Straining an increasingly brittle cease-fire further, Palestinian Resistance men killed one Israeli civilian and wounded two others near the West Bank city of Jericho. The Israelis were on a jeep tour of the Judean desert when they were ambushed.
Earlier, a 10-year-old Palestinian girl and two Palestinian policemen died during fighting that ensued after Israeli tanks and infantry rumbled into Palestinian-controlled parts of three West Bank cities, Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A Palestinian at the hospital in the West Bank town of Beit Jalla, shows the bodies of two Palestinians killed along with militia commander Atef Abayat during an explosion in their car, late Thursday Oct. 18, 2001. Israel had no immediate comment on Thursday's car explosion in Bethlehem. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)