JERICHO - Israeli tanks rumbled into the Palestinian-ruled city of Jericho to attack a security facility yesterday and four Palestinians were killed in a gunbattle with Israeli forces advancing on another West Bank city.
The violence coincided with a new United States call for Israeli-Palestinian truce talks. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he had urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hold truce talks even in the midst of the crisis over the devastating attacks on New York and Washington.
In heavy fighting in Jenin, a West Bank city surrounded by Israeli forces for the past two days, soldiers killed three Palestinians and wounded 11 in an attack on a local-government building, Palestinian officials said. A fourth Palestinian died when he blew himself up next to an Israeli tank. There were no reports of Israeli casualties.
Twelve Israeli tanks, accompanied by bulldozers, moved 2km inside Palestinian-ruled territory to strike at a training centre used by Palestinian forces in Jericho.
Earlier, Palestinians shot dead two Israelis in an attack on a van carrying teachers to school in Israeli-occupied territory north of Jericho.
A Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, a Jericho resident and peace negotiator, accused Israel of launching an offensive against the Palestinians while world attention was focused on the terror attacks in the US that toppled the World Trade Center and turned part of the Pentagon into an inferno.
In fighting in and around Jenin, Israeli troops killed at least seven Palestinians, hospital officials and witnesses said.
Later, Palestinian gunmen shot dead a Jewish settler woman travelling in a car near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, said a spokesman for the settler umbrella group, YESHA. In apparent retaliation, Israeli fire destroyed two security posts in Qalqilya and one in the nearby town of Salfit, Palestinian witnesses said.
- REUTERS
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Tanks in Jericho as fighting rages in Middle East
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