|
Helicopter attack { September 1 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21680-2002Aug31.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21680-2002Aug31.html
Israeli Strike Kills Suspected Militant
Helicopter Attack on Car in West Bank Also Claims 2 Teenagers and 2 Children
By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 1, 2002; Page A16
JERUSALEM, Aug. 31 -- Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a car driven by a man whom Israel identified as a Palestinian militant in a West Bank town this afternoon, killing the driver, two teenagers in the vehicle and two children playing nearby, according to Palestinian officials.
Palestinian authorities said the assassination and the deaths of the four youths could undercut ongoing efforts to revive peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as internal efforts among Palestinian militant groups to call a halt to suicide bombings inside Israel.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said the attack was a preemptive strike against Palestinians who allegedly were planning to carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis "in the next few days."
[Early Sunday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians as they tried to infiltrate a Jewish settlement in Hebron, an Israeli security official said. The official said soldiers opened fire after spotting the men sneaking through a fence that surrounds the settlement of Kiryat Arba. Soldiers found wire cutters, a saw and various weapons when they searched the bodies.
[Palestinian sources said that the four men were laborers passing by and that they were not attempting to infiltrate the settlement.]
Separately today, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli soldiers arrested Hassan Yousef, the spokesman and senior political leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. Yousef and an unidentified man were led blindfolded out of a house in the center of the city. Their capture was filmed by an Associated Press Television News cameraman.
Israeli security sources said large sums of money were found in the house where Yousef was arrested.
The targets of today's missile attack near the town of Tubas were two suspected members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group that associates itself with Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, according to an Israeli military spokeswoman. Rafat Daraghmeh, 28, was killed, while Jihad Sawaftah, 27, described by local journalists as the leader of the Tubas arm of the group, managed to escape the car and flee despite his injuries, local Palestinian journalists said.
Israeli helicopters fired four missiles at the car as it traveled along a road on the western edge of Tubas in the northern West Bank, about 12 miles northeast of Nablus. The first missile hit the balcony of a nearby house, and the next three sliced through the white car, according to witnesses.
The car was destroyed, killing Daraghmeh and two 15-year-old boys, Yazid Daraghmeh and Sari Mahmoud Sbeih, who local residents said were members of the Fatah movement but were not being sought by Israeli authorities. It was not known if Yazid and Rafat Daraghmeh were closely related, because many families in Tubas share that name. Medical authorities described the bodies of the car's occupants as burned "black like coal" and said the only remains found of Rafat Daraghmeh was a hand.
Shrapnel from the missiles killed two young children who were near the car, Osama Daraghmeh, 12, and Bahirah Daraghmeh, 6, according to Mahmoud Abu Halawa, deputy chief of the Shifa Medical Center in Tubas where the injured were treated. The children were cousins, but it was unknown if they were related directly to the suspected militant who was targeted.
Burhan Daraghmeh, 45, said he was holding the hand of his daughter, Bahirah, when "Suddenly she flew out of my hand. I couldn't do anything. I saw the car on fire."
The girl's father was not injured.
Osama was playing with friends nearby when shrapnel hit and killed him, according to local officials and medical authorities.
Seven other residents, including four children, were injured, said medical clinic officials. A 7-year-old boy was reported severely injured.
The Israeli military spokeswoman said, "It appears innocent civilians were hurt, and IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] express sorrow for every innocent civilian hurt. That obviously was not the intention."
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has ordered an investigation into the incident.
The missile attack by two Apache helicopters came two days after Israeli authorities expressed regret over the deaths of four members of one Palestinian family, including a 4-year-old boy, when an Israeli tank opened fire on their Bedouin community in the Gaza Strip Thursday.
"This trend of bombing families from the skies and from tanks must stop," said Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority's minister for local government. "It is a brutal crime and it is an attempt to undermine every effort to revive the peace process and every effort by Palestinians to break this vicious cycle of violence and stop the suicide bombings."
Abdelaziz Rantisi, a spokesman for Hamas, said, "They [Israelis] are using terror attacks against our people to continue their occupation and aggression against Palestinians. These terror attacks will just lead to an escalation of the resistance. More operations will take place by al-Aqsa and Hamas until that kind of aggression against our people has ended."
In a raid two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers killed a Hamas leader in Tubas. A 19-year-old neighbor ordered by Israeli soldiers to lure the leader, who uses a wheelchair, out of the house was also shot and killed in the attack. Human rights groups accused the military of using the youth as a "human shield."
Also today, two other Palestinians were killed in unrelated incidents. An assailant was shot by Jewish settlers when he infiltrated a West Bank settlement, and a 24-year-old man was killed by Palestinians who accused him of being a spy for Israel.
In other incidents, a man and woman from Jerusalem on a weekend visit to the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha, just south of Nablus, were shot and seriously wounded tonight by a Palestinian gunman who infiltrated the community, according to Israeli military and television reports. The gunman was then shot and killed by guards from the settlement while trying to escape, the television report said. The radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to a television station in Lebanon.
Palestinian militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said they killed two Palestinians in the last two days for collaborating with Israeli security forces.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
|
|
