A number of Palestinians were reported killed and dozens injured Sunday night after Israeli troops opened fire on a building in the West Bank city of Ramallah believed to be housing Palestinian security forces as well as armed Palestinians.
Palestinians said that emergency forces could not reach the area as it was still under fire. The precise number of dead and injured, as well as their identities, were not immediately known.
Elsewhere, Israeli tanks streamed into the West Bank city of Qalqilyah Sunday night, Palestinian security sources and residents told Reuters.
Palestinians said about 100 tanks and other armored vehicles entered the Palestinian town from four directions and were close to the city center. Residents said they could hear explosions from occasional shelling and heavy machinegun fire.
Residents also said electricity was cut off to the town, located in the northwestern part of the West Bank on the Green Line border with Israel. Armored vehicles also amassed near Bethlehem.
Meanwhile, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas claimed the suicide bombing which killed 16 people apart from the bomber and wounded more than 30 others in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades named the member who carried out the bombing as Shadi Tubassi, 23, from the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
In its statement, Hamas highlighted that Tubassi had been able to pass through the Israeli security maze between the West Bank and the crowded restaurant in Haifa which was destroyed in the blast.
It said Haifa had been "occupied since 1948" when borders were redrawn to create the Jewish state, and said the suicide bomber carried out the attack "in the middle of a group of invaders usurping our land and our country."
It said the attack was "the third in the chain of operations promised to the terrorist Sharon and his nazi government," referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who later declared in a national television broadcast that Israel "is in a war."
The Islamic group also personally threatened Sharon's life. "Al-Qassam Brigades ... invite the criminal Sharon and his nazi government to wait for the fourth link in this chain, since he could well be among its victims," it said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
