An Israeli was shot dead Monday evening when Palestinian gunmen opened fire in the Bethlehem area. Earlier Monday, eight Israeli soldiers were injured, one seriously and seven moderately to lightly, in a shooting attack in Ramallah area. The bodies of two Palestinian policemen were found in a Ramallah park.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers streamed into more Palestinian towns and massed on the edge of Bethlehem in an expansion of their West Bank offensive Monday, as Palestinian activists killed 10 suspected collaborators ahead of the advancing Israeli troops.
According to AP, Israeli soldiers conducted door-to-door searches in Ramallah and the northern city of Qalqilya, which the army seized the night before.
One Israeli soldier was seriously wounded by an explosion during a house search in Qalqilya, the Israeli military said.
Sporadic gunfire and explosions echoed through Ramallah for hours.
Late in Monday afternoon, five Israeli tanks and a bulldozer moved into the northern town of Tulkarem, near Qalqilya.
Israeli tanks rolled into southern Bethlehem just before sunrise, witnesses said, stopping about 500 yards from the Church of the Nativity.
A few hours later, tanks left Bethlehem. But witnesses said a total of about 40 Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers and several buses of soldiers had gathered on the town's northern edge.
Forces also moved into the nearby villages of Al-Khader and Beit Jalla, witnesses said. The tanks left Al-Khader in the morning but came back in the afternoon. Israeli forces imposed a curfew in Beit Jalla and occupied buildings that gave them views into Bethlehem.
Five foreign activists protesting the Israeli invasion were wounded when they marched up to tanks in Beit Jalla, doctors said. An Israeli soldiers fired his machine gun toward the ground and shrapnel hit the demonstrators, said Auni Jubran, one of the protest's organizers. Those injured included three British, one Japanese and one French protester. An Associated Press Television News cameraman, Iyad Hamad, sustained light injuries.
In the Gaza Strip, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers as he played near a market in Rafah, Palestinian hospital officials said.
For his part, Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat accused U.S. President Bush and the United Nations of ignoring the Palestinians' suffering. "There is total destruction, total state terror against the Palestinians," Erekat told The Associated Press. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
