KFAR DAROM, Gaza Strip Two Palestinian suicide bombers onmissions of revenge killed at least six Israelis and wounded 47, mostof them soldiers, in separate attacks outside Jewish settlementsSunday.
Israel responded to the bombings by vowing to continue peacenegotiations with the Palestinians but warning that it will notwithdraw from the occupied West Bank before PLO chairman YasserArafat demonstrates that he can control security in the Gaza Strip.
"With suicide attacks, it is much harder to see how we can moveahead," Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said as he visited the site ofthe first attack, outside the isolated settlement of Kfar Darom, 10miles south of Gaza City.
"We won't interrupt the negotiations," but "we'll demand thatthey prove here in Gaza that they are capable" of preventing attacks.
Nearby were the charred remains of the blue van that had blownup next to an Israeli bus. Shortly after noon, the No. 36 bus fromthe Israeli community of Ashkelon was approaching Kfar Darom,carrying settlers and young soldiers returning to their bases afterweekend leave, when the van suddenly pulled alongside it, witnessessaid.
A man later identified by Islamic Jihad, a militant Islamicgroup, as 24-year-old Khaled Mohammad Khatib from Gaza's Nusseiratrefugee camp was driving the van. Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak,the Israeli army chief of staff, said that Khatib detonated dozens ofpounds of explosives hidden under bags of grass in the van.
The explosion killed Khatib and ripped out one side of the bus,hurling passengers into the air. Five soldiers, all of them 19- and20-year-olds, were killed. Dozens of people were injured.
Jewish settlers living in the stucco houses of Kfar Darom rushedto give first aid to the wounded. Army helicopters evacuated themost seriously injured to hospitals in Beersheba and Ashkelon assoldiers sealed off the area and began searching for otherexplosives. Palestinian police, who jointly patrol the road withIsraelis, and reporters were kept from the site.
Two hours after that attack, a second suicide bomber drove hiscar into a convoy of Israeli army jeeps escorting settler cars nearNetzarim, another isolated settlement just north of Kfar Darom thathas been the target of many attacks since Israel handed over most ofthe Gaza Strip to the Palestinians last May. One Israeli was killedand several were injured.
Hamas - as the Islamic Resistance Movement, the largest and mostpowerful Islamic organization in Gaza, is known - claimedresponsibility for the Netzarim attack. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihadsaid that they carried out Sunday's bombings to take revenge for lastweek's death of a key Hamas guerrilla, Kamal Kheil.
Kheil and five other Palestinians were killed when the Gaza Cityapartment building where they were staying was ripped by a powerfulexplosion. The Palestinian police and Israel said that Kheil, headof Hamas' Iziddin Qassam military wing, was operating a bomb factoryout of the apartment building and was the victim of an accidentalexplosion. But Hamas blamed Israel and the self-governingPalestinian Authority led by Arafat for the explosion and vowed toseek revenge.
Tension has been building between the Islamic organizations andthe Palestinian Authority for weeks since Arafat, the PalestineLiberation Organization chairman, stepped up public verbal attacks onthe groups and began allowing his security forces to arrest more oftheir activists.
Israeli officials recently noted that Arafat's attitude towardthe Islamic organizations seemed to be changing after months of whatthey regarded as his futile effort to bring the groups into thepolitical process by trying to accommodate them.
Arafat was quick to condemn Sunday's attacks, both publicly andin a phone call to Rabin offering his condolences to the families ofthe dead and wounded. Israel Television reported that Rabin demandedonce again that Arafat confront Hamas and Islamic Jihad and disarmtheir militias.
"We are committed to confronting terrorism. These people arethe enemies of peace," Arafat said in a statement released by hisoffice. "We call this peace the peace of the courageous, and we needcourage to confront these people."
Israel's Parliament, which is in recess for the upcomingPassover holiday, will meet in a special session Wednesday to discussSunday's attacks and Environment Minister Yossi Sarid's call lastweek for Israel to abandon the Netzarim settlement.
There are about 4,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza. Most of them areconcentrated in two blocs - one in the north and one in the south.When Israel withdrew most of its forces from Gaza last May, itmaintained control of roads leading to the settlements and jointlypatrols access roads with the Palestinians.
Talks between Israel and the Palestinians on the final status ofsettlements in the Gaza and the West Bank are due to start in 1996,but the Palestinians have called repeatedly on the Israelis todismantle the Gaza settlements now.
No comments:
Post a Comment