The Hindu : Seven Israelis die in attack

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 17, 2002

International

International

Seven Israelis die in attack

Israeli soldiers move, next to an army tank, towards a house during a search operation for wanted Palestinians in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Tuesday. — AP

JERUSALEM July 16. Seven persons were killed and 25 injured today after Palestinians detonated a roadside bomb while an armoured bus passed by and then shot at civilians as they fled, police and military officials said.

A roadside device detonated as a bus was passing near the Emmanuel settlement, and shooting then followed, said a police spokesman, Rafi Yaffe.

Seven persons were killed, said Shahar Ayalon, the police commander in the northern West Bank. Medics at the scene quoted the injured as saying that after the initial explosion, several smaller ones went off, followed by shooting, Israel radio said. The witnesses said the attackers, about three in all, were dressed in Israel army uniforms and had escaped in the direction of Nablus. A military source said 25 persons were injured.

Israel blamed the Palestinian Authority for the attack. "Israeli civilians continue to be the choice targets of Palestinian terrorists," said David Baker, a spokesman for the Government, calling the attack "further proof that the Palestinian Authority considers terrorism a primary mode of operation."

An ambush on a bus in the same area on December 12 killed 10 Israelis. The last attack on Israelis occurred on June 20, when a gunman killed five Israelis in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, near Nablus in north West Bank. In a related development, the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, today on the eve of West Asia talks in New York with other major mediators, offered Yasser Arafat a political future as a figurehead leader of the Palestinians.

Mr. Powell said in a television interview broadcast yesterday that he would be "more than willing to consider" a proposal that Mr. Arafat remain in symbolic office above a Palestinian Prime Minister who would hold the executive power.

The idea could bridge the gap between the United States, which insists on a new Palestinian leadership, and the Arab and European leaders whom Mr. Powell will meet on Tuesday. The Arabs and Europeans say it is up to the Palestinians to choose their own leader, even if they insist on Mr. Arafat.

Mr. Powell will have talks with European Union officials today led by the foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, the Egyptian and Jordanian Foreign Ministers, the Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov and the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. The United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations make up the West Asia "quartet", an informal co-ordinating group seeking an elusive common approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

— AP, Reuters

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