Steve Quayle News Alerts

June 25, 2002

By Amos Harel, Ha'aretz Correspondent, Ha'aretz Service, and agenciesIDF troops in Ramallah on Monday morning.

Four Palestinians were killed Tuesday, including a high-ranking intelligence officer, as the IDF raided the Palestinian Authority security headquarters and imposed a curfew on the city.

Palestinian security officials said that the four were killed in an exchange of gunfire at the PA security complex in Hebron.

Palestinian security officials also said that the Palestinian security chief, Nizam Jaabri, turned himself in to Israeli soldiers. Palestinians said some are suspected of killing five people thought to be collaborators with Israeli intelligence.

Palestinian sources also said that Israeli forces arrested 150 Palestinians, including the chief of intelligence in the Hebron area.

The assault on the hilltop building in Hebron began when IDF troops surrounded the site and exchanged fire with policemen inside. Then soldiers entered the building and searched from room to room, Palestinians said, while forces outside used loudspeakers to demand that all the Palestinians inside surrender with their hands raised. Security officials said that some policemen gave themselves up.

The army said soldiers entered Hebron to operate against the "terrorist infrastructure" there. A military statement said a "large number" of suspects had been arrested. Also, soldiers discovered an explosives laboratory.

The IDF is still occupying most of the largest cities in the West Bank (Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Qalqiliyah, Tul Karm and Bethlehem), many of which are still under curfew.

Reports from Hebron said Israeli tanks also entered Dora and Bani Naim, two Palestinian-controlled towns near Hebron, but there were no reports of shooting or arrests.

Elsewhere, IDF troops shot and killed a Palestinian near the Karmi border crossing, after he threw handgrenades at the Israeli position. An Israeli soldier was lightly injured in the incident.

In Nablus, city governor Nahmoud Alol said Israeli troops entered his six-story apartment building, evacuated two floors and locked the rest of the residents inside their apartments. Palestinian sources reported that Alol was not at home at the time. There has been no Israeli reposnse to the report, which was being investigated.

Sharon: IDF preparing 'massive operation' against Hamas in Gaza
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Monday that the IDF is readying a "massive operation" in the Gaza Strip, which will target the militant Hamas organization, responsible for many attacks on Israeli civilians.

Sharon, speaking at a Likud faction meeting in the Knesset, said that Israel was "preparing to launch a massive operation in the Gaza Strip against the Hamas organization, the beginning of which we witnessed today," a reference to Monday morning's apparent assassination in the Strip, in which missile-firing IAF helicopter gunships killed two senior Hamas military commanders and four other people.

Sharon said that due to the recent increase in terror attacks and warnings of attacks, "a number of measures in the territories, beginning with a massive incursion into cities and remaining there indefinitely," will be carried out.

According to Sharon, troops will remain in Palestinian towns in an effort to capture and arrest terrorists. Sharon emphasized that the operation was not meant to be an invasion to occupy the territories but rather meant to deal with those who carry out terror attacks and their commanders. "We do not intend to control the Palestinian's civilian lives," said the prime minister.

Hamas vows revenge for assassinations
The militant group Hamas on Monday vowed to step up its suicide attacks on Israelis following the IAF's missile attack.

"We emphasize our right to continue the jihad and resistance and to intensify the martyrdom operations as a reaction to the policy of the occupation and the [Palestinian] Authority," the group said in a statement.

IDF Apache helicopter gunships attacked two taxis driving in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip early Monday, killing two senior Hamas militants and four other people, and Israel Radio reported that Israel had confirmed the assassination operation.

One of the dead, and the intended target of the strike, was Yasser Rizak, the Rafah-area commander of the Hamas military arm. A second man, Amr Kouffa, who was described as a central activist of Hamas's military wing, was also killed.

Shin Bet security officials defined Rizak as a "ticking bomb," saying he had been involved in several attempts in recent weeks to dispatch suicide bombers into Israel. Also killed in the attack were two of Rizak's brothers, one of the taxi drivers and another man.

The helicopter raid in Rafah's Abu Sneina quarter came hours after IDF tanks and troops took over the key West Bank town of Ramallah and surrounded Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's headquarters compound in the city, as the army's Operation Determined Path went into its sixth day.

Assassinations, or "targeted killings," were a main weapon employed by Israel in earlier stages of the present conflict with the Palestinians. The IDF last week resumed assassination operations in the territories after a hiatus of more than a month, killing a senior Fatah activist in the Bethlehem area.

Palestinian security sources said one of the cars was turned into a pile of twisted wreckage and the body parts of the passengers were scattered amid the smoking remains of the vehicle.

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