- TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters)
- The Israeli army swept into Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank early
on Tuesday following a Palestinian militant attack on a kibbutz that killed
five Israelis, witnesses said.
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- Israeli security sources had said hours before that Israel
had decided on military action in the Tulkarm and Nablus areas of the West
Bank because they were suspected of links to Sunday night's assault on
the collective farm community inside Israel.
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- Military retaliation for the attack by a lone gunman,
who killed the collective farm community's administrator, two women and
two small children before escaping, was likely to complicate a new U.S.
peace mission that began on Monday.
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- Palestinian witnesses and security sources said around
30 tanks, armored troop carriers and jeeps stormed into Tulkarm's camp
around 3 a.m. (8 p.m. EST) and fanned through the streets.
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- They reported heavy gunfire from Israeli troops but no
immediate resistance from Palestinian militants, who have waging an uprising
against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since September
2000.
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- The Israeli army had no immediate comment.
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- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and new Defense Minister
Shaul Mofaz, visited the kibbutz, close to the West Bank boundary with
Israel and just north of Tulkarm, on Monday evening and discussed a "measured"
military response to the attack.
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- Israeli security sources said afterward Sharon and Mofaz
had opted for military action "in the coming hours" in Nablus,
from which the gunman was believed to have come, and Tulkarm, the Palestinian
city closest to the attack site.
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- In the Gaza Strip's Rafah refugee camp on Monday night,
a two-year-old Palestinian child was shot dead in the arms of his father
by what witnesses called unprovoked gunfire into the neighborhood from
an Israeli army watchtower, medics said.
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- An army spokesman said Israeli troops had responded to
shots fired at them. "This is a very hot area," he said, referring
to past clashes with Palestinian militants in Rafah.
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- CHILDREN SHOT DEAD IN BED
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- The gunman slipped overnight into Kibbutz Metzer and
opened fire, killing a woman visitor and its administrator in what was
a rare raid on an Israeli collective farm.
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- The militant burst into a house, gunning down a 34-year-old
mother in the doorway of her children's room and killing two sons aged
four and five as they held bedding over their heads.
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- The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah,
claimed responsibility. It said it was avenging Israel's killing of an
Islamic militant commander and vowed "more martyrdom attacks until
occupation leaves our land."
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- Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) has sought, so far
in vain, to persuade Islamic militants spearheading the uprising for independence
not to attack civilians inside Israel, as opposed to Israeli troops and
Jewish settlers on West Bank and Gaza territory that Palestinians seek
for a state.
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- It expressed "strong condemnation of the killing
of civilians" at the kibbutz but said it was carried out while a "brutal
war machine" was killing Palestinian men, women and children in occupied
territories.
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- Hopes for a halt to suicide bombings in the uprising
were renewed after Palestinian officials said the Islamic militant group
Hamas had discussed a possible one-year suspension of such attacks during
talks with Fatah in Cairo on Monday.
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- But the new violence clouded U.S. envoy David Satterfield's
arrival to push a new peace "roadmap" entailing reciprocal steps
by the two sides -- mainly Palestinian reforms and Israeli military withdrawals
-- leading to a Palestinian state in 2005.
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- The proposal, part of efforts by an international "Quartet"
made up of U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russian mediators,
has met with skepticism from Palestinian officials and Israeli cabinet
ministers.
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- Most in the region believe the roadmap will go nowhere
at least until after Israel's general election on January 28 and a resolution
to the crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction now preoccupying
President Bush.
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- At least 1,655 Palestinians and 631 Israelis have been
killed since the Palestinian revolt erupted in September 2000 after U.S.-brokered
talks on Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza stalled.
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