- HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters)
- Palestinian gunmen ambushed Jewish settlers walking home from Sabbath
prayers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, killing at least 12 people in the
deadliest attack on Israelis in Hebron in two years of violence.
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- The settlers and soldiers who rushed to their aid were
struck down by heavy gunfire from a house overlooking a route Israelis
call "worshippers' way" linking the divided West Bank city to
the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba, the army said.
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- The Islamic Jihad group said it carried out the assault
as payback for Israel's killing of one of its military leaders a week ago.
Islamic Jihad gunmen in Gaza handed out sweets to youngsters and fired
in the air to celebrate the Hebron attack.
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- Medical officials put the number of Israeli dead at 12
and said about 15 others were wounded in the ambush that raised the specter
of heavy retaliation by Israel's right-wing government.
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- It was the highest Israeli death toll in Hebron since
a Palestinian uprising for statehood began in September 2000.
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- Local officials said two Palestinians were killed by
Israeli fire on the house where the gunmen were believed to be holed up.
Israel Radio said the two dead were thought to be gunmen.
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- The surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence, coinciding
with a stormy campaign for an Israeli general election on January 28, is
expected to delay international peacemaking and deepen regional uncertainty
ahead of a possible U.S. war on Iraq.
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- "There was shooting everywhere," Arik, an Israeli
caught up in the ambush, told Army Radio. "I didn't know where to
go. I fell flat on the ground... It was a slaughter."
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- Some 450 settlers, many armed and among the most extreme
in the West Bank, live in enclaves alongside 130,000 Palestinians in Hebron,
a flashpoint city divided into Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled sectors
in an interim peace deal in 1997.
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- Ultra-nationalists in the caretaker cabinet that Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon is leading in the run-up to the election count settlers
as their core constituency and are likely to push for an iron-fist response
to Friday's attack.
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- But political commentators said Israel was likely to
delay retaliation until after the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday.
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- "SABBATH MASSACRE"
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- "It's the Sabbath massacre," said Yoni Peled,
deputy spokesman of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
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- The shrine where the settlers had worshipped is the traditional
burial place of biblical patriarchs holy to Jews and Muslims. In 1994,
settler Baruch Goldstein shot dead dozens of Arab worshippers in a mosque
on the site.
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- Captain Jacob Dallal, an army spokesman, said Jewish
worshippers accompanied by a border police jeep had been walking back to
Kiryat Arba from the Tomb of the Patriarchs when they came under fire about
500 meters (yards) from the settlement.
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- "There were a lot of casualties among the civilians,"
he said. "There were casualties among the border police. An Israeli
army rescue force, including ambulances also came. They were also shot
at, and there were more casualties."
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- Speaking by telephone to al-Jazeera satellite television,
the head of Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Shallah, described the attack on the
settlers as a "remarkable operation."
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- Settlers living on occupied land Palestinians want for
a state of their own have been frequent targets for attack during an uprising
in which at least 1,659 Palestinians and 639 Israelis have been killed.
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- The international community regards settlements as illegal.
Israel disputes this.
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- An Islamic Jihad official in the Gaza Strip said the
ambush was "a natural response to the Israeli assassination of martyr
Iyad Sawalha."
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- Sawalha, head of the group's military wing in the northern
West Bank, was shot dead by Israeli troops during a sweep for militants
in the West Bank city of Jenin last Saturday. The army said he was killed
after he threw grenades at the soldiers.
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- Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief,
issued a statement condemning "in the strongest terms today's attack
against Israeli civilians."
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- He said the bloodshed occurred just as "efforts
were being made to end violence," an apparent reference to a peace
"roadmap" charted by the United States, EU, Russia and the United
Nations that has failed to jumpstart peacemaking.
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- Last month, Israeli forces staged a limited pullback
from areas of Hebron reoccupied after Palestinian suicide bombings.
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- The latest bloodshed could herald a return in force to
the Palestinian-ruled part of Hebron, where Israeli soldiers still hold
a number of positions overlooking settler houses.
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