Gunman's rampage sets off fresh Mideast killing spree

JERUSALEM - A suspected Palestinian gunman posing as an Israeli soldier opened fire in a crowded bus terminal in northern Israel, killing three Israelis and wounding 13, Israeli officials said.

The shooting in the town of Afula has all but consigned the latest ceasefire to dust.

It followed the explosion of a Russian passenger jet from Tel Aviv bound for Siberia over the Black Sea with up to 78 people on board, most of them Israelis.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation, but Israel said it had yet to find evidence of sabotage.

But the shooting rampage in Afula was the latest incident in a wave of violence that has brought a fragile ceasefire accord to the brink of collapse a week after Israel and the Palestinians renewed it.

Washington has applied intense pressure to both sides to end a year of violence as it tries to draw Arab and Islamic countries into an anti-terrorism coalition to respond to the September 11 attacks.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the plane crash "a heavy tragedy" for Israel and Russia, but his focus was on the Afula shootings.

"Israel suffered another murderous Palestinian terrorist attack which took a heavy toll - three dead and seven wounded," Sharon said. Hospitals put the number of wounded at 13.

"All our efforts to reach a ceasefire have been torpedoed by the Palestinians. The fire did not cease, not even for one day," he said, referring to a truce reaffirmed a week ago in talks between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

"The [security] cabinet has therefore instructed our security forces to take all necessary measures to bring full security to the citizens of Israel," Sharon said.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the PLO Executive Committee, at a meeting chaired by Arafat, called on Palestinian factions to respect the ceasefire fully "out of concern for the higher national interest".

Witnesses said the Alufa gunman, wearing an olive Israeli Army uniform and a red paratroop beret, had fired wildly into the crowd of travellers before being killed by security forces.

Hours later, Israeli troops shot dead a 28-year-old Palestinian man and wounded three children in the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian witnesses and hospital sources said. The Israeli Army said it was responding to Palestinian fire.

In Bethlehem, a Palestinian gunman was critically wounded by an explosive device in what Palestinian officials called an Israeli assassination attempt.

Rami Kamel, aged 21, an activist in Arafat's Fatah faction, lost a hand from a device detonated by remote control, Palestinian officials and hospital sources said.

Israeli diplomatic sources said on Thursday the security cabinet had granted approval for the Army to reinstate an internationally condemned policy of hunting and killing suspected Palestinian militants.

In response to the return of the track-and-kill policy, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "Israeli guns have not been silenced since the truce. Israel has not begun the ceasefire to say it is ending it now."

In the bus station at Afula - a working-class city on the edge of the Galilee region - travellers fled in panic when the shooting erupted.

Bus driver Nahum Zamir told Israel Radio the gunman "just started shooting in all directions" from an automatic weapon.

An Israeli soldier who fired at the gunman said a search of the body had turned up an orange identification card, an Israeli document issued to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli radio stations said police had found a letter in Arabic, apparently a suicide note, on the gunman's body.

Sharon warned that Israel would now largely keep its own interests in mind. "We can only count on ourselves," he said. "From now on we will count only on ourselves."

Sharon drew parallels to events leading up to the Second World War, when European countries gave approval to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia.

"I call on the Western democracies and primarily the leader of the free world, the United States, 'Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938 when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a convenient temporary solution. Do not try to appease the Arabs on our expense'," Sharon said.

"This is unacceptable to us. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism."

- REUTERS

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