JERUSALEM (Islamweb & Agencies) -A doctor said that a Palestinian woman in labor was barred from passing an Israeli military checkpoint for an hour, giving birth in her car to a baby boy who died before reaching a medical clinic. In another checkpoint confrontation, an Israeli soldier shot and killed a Palestinian woman. Meanwhile, 26 Palestinian families whose houses were demolished by Israeli occupation authorities earlier this months are living in tents in the Gaza strip. (Read photo caption below).
Firial Idries, who was in labor with her third child, was being driven Tuesday evening by her husband from their West Bank village of Bardala to a clinic in the village of Tubas, about 12 miles away, said Dr. Abdel Hassan Daraghmeh, who runs the Tubas clinic.En route, the car was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint and soldiers prevented it from passing for about an hour, Daraghmeh said, citing the account he was given by relatives accompanying the woman.
The woman gave birth at the checkpoint, assisted by her mother-in-law, the doctor said. After the birth, soldiers relented and let the car pass, and eventually mother and child arrived in Tubas, the doctor said.
Daraghmeh said the boy cried when born, but the mother-in-law didn't know how to open an airway, and he suffocated. ``The umbilical cord was still connected with the placenta and the temperature in the car was high,'' Daraghmeh said.
The child was dead on arrival at the clinical, while the mother was bleeding heavily, Dr. Daraghmeh said.
Near the West Bank city of Hebron- Al-Khalil, Palestinian factory worker Rasmia Jabarin, a 38-year-old mother of two, was shot dead Wednesday.
Palestinians say there have been dozens of cases where pregnant women in labor and others in need of urgent medical attention have been delayed or turned back.
In fresh Intifadha confrontations, Israeli occupation soldiers and Palestinian Resistance men exchanged heavy fire in the northern West Bank and the occupation army reported Palestinians threw grenades at occupation soldiers patrolling Gaza's border with Egypt.
The latest bloodshed came a day after Israel demolished some 26 homes in the Gaza Strip, an action that was condemned internationally.
The State Department called the house demolitions ''provocative'' and the European Union said they further complicated efforts to end the bloodshed.
The latest events, along with a Palestinian mortar bomb attack on an internationally illegal Israeli farming settler community near Gaza overnight, were further signs that a U.S.-brokered truce was not working.
They prompted Secretary of State Colin Powell to urge both sides to make an all-out effort to end almost 10 months of bloodshed in which more than 600 people have been killed.
``This is a time for all sides to do everything they can to get the violence down, create conditions of calm so that there is every incentive to move forward starting the Mitchell plan,'' Powell told a news conference, referring to a truce-to-talks blueprint by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A Palestinian flag flies over tents erected in the Gaza Strip by 26 Palestinian families whose houses were demolished by Israelis early on July 10, 2001. On July 11, 2001 a day after the homes were demolished, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian woman near a West Bank roadblock, and in a separate incident Israeli police said they arrested a bomb-toting Palestinian in a northern Israeli city. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)