Israeli Army begins retaliation attack

TULKARM, WEST BANK - The Israeli Army swept into Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank yesterday following a Palestinian militant attack on a kibbutz that killed five Israelis, witnesses said.

Israeli security sources had said hours before that Israel had decided on military action in the Tulkarm and Nablus areas of the West Bank because they were suspected of links to Sunday night's assault on the collective farm community inside Israel.

Military retaliation for the attack by a lone gunman, who killed the collective farm community's administrator, two women and two small children before escaping, was likely to complicate a new United States peace mission.

Palestinian witnesses and security sources said about 30 tanks, armoured troop carriers and jeeps stormed into Tulkarm's camp and fanned through the streets.

They reported heavy gunfire from Israeli troops but no immediate resistance from Palestinian militants, who have been waging an uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since September 2000.

The Israeli Army had no immediate comment.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and new Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, visited the kibbutz, close to the West Bank boundary with Israel and just north of Tulkarm, on Monday evening and had discussed a "measured" military response to the attack.

Israeli security sources said afterwards that Sharon and Mofaz had opted for military action "in the coming hours" in Nablus, from which the gunman was believed to have come, and Tulkarm, the Palestinian city closest to the attack site.

In the Gaza Strip's Rafah refugee camp on Monday night, a two-year-old Palestinian child was shot dead in the arms of his father by what witnesses called unprovoked gunfire into the neighbourhood from an Israeli Army watchtower, medics said. An Army spokesman said Israeli troops had responded to shots fired at them.

"This is a very hot area," he said, referring to past clashes with Palestinian militants in Rafah.

The gunman slipped overnight into Kibbutz Metzer and opened fire, killing a woman visitor and its administrator in what was a rare raid on an Israeli collective farm.

The militant burst into a house, gunning down a 34-year-old mother in the doorway of her children's room and killing her two sons aged four and five as they held bedding over their heads.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah, claimed responsibility. It said it was avenging Israel's killing of an Islamic militant commander and vowed "more martyrdom attacks until occupation leaves our land".

Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) has sought, so far in vain, to persuade Islamic militants spearheading the uprising for independence not to attack civilians inside Israel, as opposed to Israeli troops and Jewish settlers on West Bank and Gaza territory that Palestinians seek for a state.

It expressed "strong condemnation of the killing of civilians" at the kibbutz but said it was carried out while a "brutal war machine" was killing Palestinian men, women and children in occupied territories.

Hopes for a halt to suicide bombings in the uprising were renewed after Palestinian officials said the Islamic militant group Hamas had discussed a possible one-year suspension of such attacks during talks with Fatah in Cairo on Monday.

The new violence clouded US envoy David Satterfield's arrival to push a new peace "roadmap" entailing reciprocal steps by the two sides - mainly Palestinian reforms and Israeli military withdrawals - leading to a Palestinian state in 2005.

The proposal, part of efforts by an international "Quartet" made up of US, European Union, United Nations and Russian mediators, has met scepticism from Palestinian officials and Israeli cabinet ministers.

At least 1655 Palestinians and 631 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian revolt erupted in September 2000 after US-brokered talks on Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza stalled.

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday for the removal of Yasser Arafat's Administration after the kibbutz killing. The hawkish ex-Premier was appointed last week after the collapse of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unity Government.

Israeli media have speculated Israel might expel Arafat in the heat of a US campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Sharon has promised US PresidentGeorge Bush - who wants to avoid inflaming the Arab world - not to harm or depose Arafat.

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