Israelis pummel camps; 11 killed

NABLUS - Israeli forces shot their way into two Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank yesterday, killing 11 people in an upsurge of violence that cast a deep shadow over a new Middle East peace initiative.

The Israeli Army said one of its soldiers was also killed in heavy fighting at one of the camps, Balata, just outside the Palestinian-ruled town of Nablus, during operations it said it mounted to flush out "terrorists".

The raids marked the fiercest assault carried out against Palestinian refugee camps - the main strongholds of militant groups - since an uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in September 2000. Both the United States and the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed alarm at the Israeli action.

Annan said Israeli soldiers should immediately get out of Palestinian refugee camps, where a raid resulted in 11 deaths and more than 100 injuries.

"What distresses me particularly is that this time, as a result of incursions into refugee camps by the Israel Defence Forces, large numbers of Palestinians are reported dead or injured.

"I call on the IDF to withdraw from these camps immediately, and I implore both sides to refrain from further actions which may endanger yet more civilian lives," he said.

The United States also urged its close ally Israel to exercise restraint. "We do believe it's extremely important that every possible effort be made to avoid harm to civilians. The United States is concerned about the present situation on the ground, especially in the Balata refugee camp," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Palestinians charged that the incursions, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, were an attempt by Israel to wreck a land-for-peace proposal floated by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that has won US support and gained international momentum.

Gunmen at Balata, the biggest camp in the West Bank, said they had pinned down 14 Israeli commandos at a UN school.

"Getting in is one thing, getting out is another," one fighter said.

The Israeli Army said troops had seized the school as an observation post and vehemently denied they were under siege.

More than 100 Palestinians were wounded in the fighting, which Nablus governor Mahmoud al-Aloul called "the fiercest battle since the beginning of the intifada [uprising]." Two Israeli soldiers were also hurt.

Witnesses said troops were taking over one building after another in Balata, in some cases even punching holes through the walls of adjoining apartments to move from one to the next.

Lieutenant-Colonel Olivier Rafowicz, an Army spokesman, said the aim was "not to reoccupy these areas but to surgically confront the terrorism which is on the rampage there.". He did not say how long the operation would last.

In response, gunmen fired assault rifles and two mortar bombs from nearby Palestinian areas at the Jewish settlement of Gilo on the edge of Jerusalem, and soldiers shot back.

Marwan al-Barghouthi, a leader of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, predicted further Palestinian retaliation and called for mass street protests in Palestinian areas "against the Israeli massacres of our people".

Yesterday's raids on Balata and a second camp in the town of Jenin followed an attack at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank on Thursday by a Palestinian woman suicide bomber who blew herself up, wounding three Israeli policemen.

Relatives identified her as Darin Abu Eisha, aged 22, an English literature student and Islamic militant at An-Najah University in Nablus, whose cousin blew himself up a month ago at a bus station in Tel Aviv.

It was the first time in 17 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence that the Army had entered Balata, a seething warren of narrow streets that is home to 19,000 refugees and a hotbed of support for fighters waging the Palestinian uprising.

The Israeli Army said the Balata and Jenin camps served as "bases of terror infrastructure that have been responsible for the murder of dozens of Israelis".

But senior aides to Arafat accused Israel of trying to sabotage a Middle East peace proposal put forward by Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler.

The initiative, while containing little new, offers Israel normal relations with the Arab world in return for a withdrawal from lands it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians have hailed it and Israel has given it a cautious welcome.

The proposal gained momentum this week when the Crown Prince told European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Jeddah that he expected Arab leaders to adopt his ideas at a summit of the Arab League in Beirut this month.

- REUTERS

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