Israeli gunships zero in on police HQ

JERUSALEM - Violence between Israel and the Palestinians has surged, with each side blaming the other for the escalation of airstrikes, bombings, shootings and stabbings.

Israeli helicopter gunships fired at least three missiles at the main Palestinian police compound in Gaza City yesterday, wounding seven policemen in what the Israeli Army called an attack on a mortar-bomb workshop.

Earlier, an explosion killed six activists of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction near Jenin in the West Bank, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinian gunmen sniped at Israeli vehicles and confronted troops.

Six mortar bombs peppered Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip in less than 24 hours. In southern Gaza, Israeli troops and Palestinians showered each other with grenades and bullets.

In Jerusalem, Palestinians set bombs as their 10-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank raged, despite a ceasefire deal that has yet to be consummated and diplomatic efforts to quell the fighting.

Palestinian cabinet minister Hassan Asfour called the helicopter raid on Gaza City "new proof that [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's Government is always seeking further escalation and wants to continue its aggressive war against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority".

Israeli Minister of Communication Ruby Rivlin said: "The [Palestinians] are really shelling us with mortars, they are bombing us, they are shooting us, they are trying to kill by sending suiciders into the streets of our towns and cities.

"We are trying to restrain ourselves and to retaliate only to the positions and spots that they are hitting us from.

"Arafat is trying to do anything in order to bring an explosion in the region," he added.

Israeli tanks moved into Palestinian-ruled areas around the West Bank city of Hebron and shelled its outer suburbs, a news agency cameraman said.

An Israeli Army spokeswoman said troops were responding mostly with light-weapons fire to Palestinian gunmen shooting at the Jewish settlement of Beit Haggai outside Hebron.

Israeli Minister of Defence Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Sharon's cabinet that attacks by Palestinians on Israelis were intensifying and becoming more sophisticated.

Israel has pledged to retaliate swiftly for all Palestinian attacks.

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man was seriously wounded when a Palestinian stabbed him in the back in Jerusalem's Old City.

"There is a concentrated effort to draw Jerusalem into the circle of violence ... we also see it in the bombing attempts in the city," Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy said.

The six Fatah men, who were on Israel's most-wanted list, were killed by an explosion that tore apart an old bus frame in a junkyard in the village of Fara, about 25km from Palestinian-ruled Jenin.

Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have assassinated more than 40 Palestinian activists since the uprising began, but an Israeli cabinet official said Israel was not involved and that the activists might have been trying to prepare a bomb.

At least 499 Palestinians, 130 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the uprising flared after peace talks stalled 10 months ago.

- REUTERS

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