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think
7/1/2002 (15:42) |
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' God gave palestine to isralites '... I DO NOT THINK SO .
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No Trace of Gunmen Amid Hebron Rubble
Palestinians Might Have Escaped Before Israelis Blew Up Building
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 30, 2002; Page A18
JERUSALEM, June 29 -- After a day of poking through the rubble of the bomb-flattened Palestinian Authority security services building in Hebron, Israeli soldiers today had found no bodies of the gunmen they believed were hiding there, Israeli officials said today.
Officials said the 15 Palestinian men whom soldiers spent four days trying to persuade to surrender might have escaped before Israeli engineers moved in to blow up the compound. With two tons of explosives set off in two detonations late last night and early this morning, the mammoth building was reduced to smoldering ruins.
The demolition of the edifice, built during the 1922-48 British rule of Palestine and a landmark in the West Bank's most important industrial center, outraged many Palestinians.
Majed Faraj, director of preventative security services in Hebron, an office that was headquartered in the building until four days ago, described the compound as 'the most important symbol of the Palestinian Authority in Hebron.' Reached by telephone, he accused the Israeli government of 'creating the pretext aimed principally at destroying the symbols of the Palestinian Authority.'
Israeli troops surrounded the compound on Tuesday as part of an operation that sealed off West Bank cities and imposed strict curfews on an estimated 700,000 people. The steps were ordered in response to two suicide bombings and a shooting attack that killed 31 people and wounded more than 100 in a three-day period in mid-June.
Many Palestinians walked out of the Hebron building and surrendered, but Israeli troops continued to say that about 15 wanted men refused to come out.
Israeli military officials said that before the two charges were set off, soldiers at the scene issued repeated warnings over loudspeakers.
The building housed offices of the Palestinian Authority's national security force, preventative security force and intelligence services, as well as the headquarters for the governor of Hebron, a military court and a prison.
Israeli Defense Forces have targeted Palestinian Authority security and police buildings in repeated attacks in West Bank cities over the past 2 1/2 months, accusing the security forces of supporting or harboring terrorists or of not doing enough to stop them from staging bombings and shootings in Israel.
Hebron had been spared attacks during the first round of incursions in April. But the destruction of its security center on Friday was one of the most violent events in the current round of incursions, which has taken Israeli troops into seven of the West Bank's eight largest cities.
Curfews in all occupied cities except Hebron were lifted for a few hours today to allow residents to shop for food and other supplies, according to Israeli officials.
When Israeli forces destroyed the security compound in Hebron, no gunfire had been reported from inside it since Friday morning.
The army had used tanks and bulldozers to damage parts of the building over four days before dispatching engineering teams to set off the two explosions. The blasts reverberated across the city, sent flames shooting skyward and blew out the window panes of nearby houses.
Witnesses reported that an automobile blown into the air was left embedded in the wall of a building. They also said a Palestinian school near the security building was heavily damaged.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers would continue to search the rubble for bodies.
Palestinian news media reported that a Palestinian woman was killed and her husband wounded by Israeli army gunfire in a separate incident near the central Gaza Strip Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom.
A military spokeswoman said that soldiers fired toward a nearby Palestinian village about 11 p.m. Friday after a mortar shell was lobbed toward the settlement. The military official said she could not confirm the death of the woman, saying, 'All we know is they fired a mortar shell and we fired back.'
In another confused incident, Palestinian news media reported that a boy of about 14 died of asphyxiation today after inhaling tear gas when Israeli troops fired the gas at a group of Palestinian youths during violence in the al-Farah refugee camp near the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
Military officials said they were unaware of such an incident but were investigating reports of a melee Friday in which troops used tear gas to disperse a group of stone-throwing youngsters. Troops at the scene reported no casualties from the incident, military officials said.
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