One Palestinian killed near Nablus as Israel wraps up Gaza raids

Articles: One Palestinian killed near Nablus as Israel wraps up Gaza raids

Posted by admin on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 06:49 AM

NABLUS, West Bank : A Palestinian man was killed by Israeli fire near this northern West Bank town as the army said it had wrapped up a three-day operation in the Gaza Strip that left as many as 16 Palestinians dead.
Yasser Abu Leimun, 32, was killed in Talluza, seven kilometers (four miles) north of Nablus, when exchanges of fire broke out between troops and wanted militants, security sources on both sides said. An army spokesman said the dead man was a member of the radical, Islamist Hamas movement and part of a group of four men troops had sought to arrest. She said the three other men managed to escape. But Abu Leimun's family said he was a university professor unknown for his political affiliations and had been killed outside his house by a stray bullet. Six Palestinians, some of them armed militants, were killed in the West Bank in the past 48 hours. There was also no let up of violence in the Gaza Strip, where a three-day operation that ended late Thursday left 16 Palestinians dead. Israeli military sources told AFP the operation, mainly concentrated in and around the northern town of Beit Lahiya, aimed to foil the firing of makeshift rockets at Jewish settlements there and communities inside Israel had. In the southern Gaza Strip, two militant groups claimed a joint attack on Israeli soldiers Thursday near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, in a statement sent to AFP Friday. An Israeli army spokeswoman told AFP two soldiers were moderately wounded by anti-tank fire. An offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and the Popular Resistance Committee -- a group consisting of ex-Fatah activists -- said they "hit a military outpost north of Deir al-Balah and wounded two Zionist soldiers." "The attack came in response to massacres perpetrated by the Zionist enemy," the statement also said. Israel, meanwhile, maintained a high security alert Friday still fearing militants' reprisal for its assassination of Hamas' top leaders. "We are in very high security alert and have been for the past three weeks since the assassination of Sheikh Yassine," said Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleinman, referring to Hamas' spiritual leader killed in a March 22 Gaza air strike. Kleinman told AFP the current security alert, only second to the maximum state of alert "in times of war" would be prolonged at least until April 27, when Israel celebrates Independence Day. Separately, Israel's military radio reported that men under 40 years of age would not be allowed into the Al Aqsa Mosque compound for the traditional Friday prayers. Dozens of Palestinians were wounded and several arrested earlier this month after clashing with Israeli police outside the mosque which is Islam's third holiest site and Judaism's most sacred spot. Also Friday, deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert warned against "very serious consequences" for his country if the ruling right-wing Likud party was to reject a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip proposed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "If the plan is not endorsed, the consequences will be very serious for Israel, at the political, security and economic levels," Olmert, who also holds the industry portfolio, told public radio. The Likud's 200,000 members will be asked on May 2 for their opinion on the pullout plan, which has gained the crucial backing of US President George W. Bush but which is slammed by Palestinians as it does away with any bilateral coordination. Olmert also said he was worried that "very few ministers have committed themselves" to promoting the plan with party's members. But Sharon told MPs Thursday the outcome of the internal referendum outcome would not be binding for the government. "The commitment we took upon ourselves, the members of Likud amd myself, to act according to the results of the referendum, is a public and moral duty, not a legal or binding duty," he said.

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