Israel steps up campaign to kill militants

GAZA - Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in a helicopter missile strike on a car carrying suspected militants in the Gaza Strip last night and surrounded Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Helicopters fired at least four missiles at a car on the edge of southern Gaza's Rafah refugee camp, leaving the vehicle a burning wreck and scattering body parts around it, witnesses said.

It was the latest in a spasm of violence that has complicated plans by United States President George W. Bush to deliver a speech expected to outline a path to a Palestinian state.

The Gaza attack appeared to be the latest strike in Israel's policy of killing Palestinian militants it blames for suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis in a 21-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.

The identities of the dead were not known.

Before this attack, Israel sent tanks into Ramallah and surrounded Arafat's presidential headquarters, already battered during fighting in previous Army incursions into the city just north of Jerusalem.

Ramallah is the sixth Palestinian city to be taken over in the past week by Israel, which has said it will reoccupy Palestinian-ruled areas and hold them until Palestinian suicide bombings and shooting attacks end.

Israel announced the policy after two Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem last week killed 26 Israelis and prompted Bush to delay his Middle East policy address.

Israel has called up 2000 reservists to assist its offensive.

"The wave of terror that has swept Israel recently ... requires a deep and thorough Army operation against terrorist infrastructure in Palestinian cities," said Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.

Palestinian officials accused Israel of planning to destroy Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

"It is obvious that the Israelis have started the long-term occupation of the West Bank and abolishment of the Palestinian Authority," said Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Arafat is under intense Israeli and international pressure to rein in militants and overhaul the authority. In an apparent response to that pressure, the authority put Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound founder and spiritual mentor of the Islamic militant group Hamas, under house arrest in Gaza City yesterday.

"The decision was issued from high up, from President Yasser Arafat," said a Palestinian security official.

Bush faces a debate within the US Administration over what Palestinians should be required to do to win the statehood they seek in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A declaration of US support for an interim Palestinian state while details of a final peace deal are negotiated has been mooted.

But Arafat appeared cool to the idea when asked about it yesterday.

- REUTERS

Feature: Middle East

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