on a Gaza Jewish settlement, just hours before the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, news reports said. Israel’s military told media that at least one woman was killed after a Palestinian mortar bomb struck a home in the Neve Dekalim settlement. One person was listed as slightly injured in the violence. Israel Radio reportedly said the woman, a visitor from Jerusalem, died in hospital of her injuries.
Although militants fire mortar bombs and crude rockets at Jewish settlements in Gaza almost daily, it has been two years since an Israeli was killed in such violence in the Gaza Strip, the Reuters news agency reported.
After the incident reporters saw how Israeli troops in Neve Dekalim fired toward the nearby Khan Younis refugee camp. Medics said two Palestinians, one of them a four-year-old boy, were wounded, Reuters reported.
PAYING CASH
A settler spokesman was quoted as saying that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s offer to pay cash advances to Gaza settlers willing to accept state compensation and leave their homes only emboldened Palestinian militants. The violence was expected to increase as militants wanted to show they were responsible for an anticipated Israeli withdrawal from the region, analysts said.
"We wouldn’t be surprised if the words ‘From Sharon with love’ aren’t written on future mortar bombs," Reuters quoted the unidentified settler spokesman as saying. Some 8,000 Israelis live in the 21 settlements that Israel has built in the Gaza Strip since capturing the area in the 1967 Middle East war. About 1.3 million Palestinians live in the narrow coastal region, according to estimates.
Friday’s attack came a day after three Palestinian gunmen killed three Israeli soldiers on the fringes of another settlement to the south.
JOURNALIST INJURED
While two Palestinians were killed in the initial clash, the third assailant remained at large and struck again some two hours later when soldiers were leading journalists on a tour of the region, news reports said. One Israeli journalist was reportedly hit in the leg and evacuated to hospital in Be’er Sheva.
Earlier in the week, on Wednesday, September 22, Palestinian female suicide bomber Zeinab Ali Isa Abu-Salem blew herself up in a Jerusalem neighborhood where hitchhikers gathered, killing at least two and injuring more than a dozen others, several news reports said.
Israeli media said the woman was a children’s TV show hostess on a Palestinian station in Shechem. Palestinian officials, including minister Saeb Erekat, have condemned the attack, saying Palestinians "oppose violence against civilians." Erekat called on Washington to help jump-start peace talks to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However Prime Minister Sharon appeared in no mood for negotiations and pledged that Israel will strike hard against suspected terrorists. (Author Stefan J. Bos contributed to the story)
