Three Palestinians Killed by Israeli Forces

14/05/2003| IslamWeb

Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip killed three Palestinian security men and wounded at least 20 people in a separate raid on a refugee camp on Wednesday, Palestinian officials said. The bloodshed, which followed a bomb attack that wounded 10 Israeli soldiers, showed that renewed U.S. peace efforts after the Iraq war have made little impact on the daily violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian officials said Israeli undercover soldiers who drove up to a Palestinian guard post in a civilian car shot dead two security men and wounded two others in an exchange of fire near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim. Earlier, an Israeli armored force backed by helicopter gunships raided the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, adjacent to the army base hit by the bombs. Hospital officials said some 20 Palestinians were wounded by a missile fired by an Apache helicopter. Witnesses said Israeli bulldozers destroyed four houses before the force withdrew. An Israeli military source said the operation was aimed at curtailing bomb attacks on army positions and Jewish settlements in the area. The violence erupted ahead of U.S.-arranged talks which Palestinian officials said were planned for Saturday between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his new reformist Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas on a peace "road map." The Islamic group Hamas, spearheading a 31-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood and opposition to the "road map," said it fired the bombs into the base located in the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekelim. **Rocket Hits Town Near Sharon's Ranch*** In a separate incident, three Israelis were slightly hurt when a homemade Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip slammed into a factory warehouse in Sderot, a southern Israeli town near Sharon's ranch, security officials said. In a newspaper interview published on Tuesday, Sharon rejected any talk of dismantling Jewish settlements in the foreseeable future despite U.S. calls for conciliatory gestures to advance the new peace plan backed by Washington. The Palestinians accept the road map but Israel does not. It outlines reciprocal steps leading to an independent Palestinian state by 2005 in the West Bank and Gaza, lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. Sharon, who has long championed settlements, sees President Bush in Washington on May 20 to voice reservations about a plan that Israel says cannot be implemented until Abbas carries out a mandated crackdown on intifada. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Palestinians carry a wounded man after he was shot during an Israeli attack at the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, May 14, 2003. (Reuters)