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U.S. urges restraint, Israel vows to avenge Hamas attack

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Thursday, January 10, 2002

JERUSALEM Ñ Israel intends to retaliate for a Palestinian attack in which four Israeli soldiers have been killed.

Israeli government sources said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon discussed the issue with senior ministers on Wednesday. The sources did not elaborate.

The United States has urged Israel to exercise restraint. On late Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned both Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to discuss the attack on the Israeli soldiers. The PA has condemned the attack.

So far, Israeli troops and tractors destroyed two PA military positions and 10 buildings near the where the attack occurred in the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli military sources said. Palestinian sources said 35 buildings were destroyed in the Rafah area.

Earlier, four Israeli soldiers were killed in a military outpost within the Israeli border. Two Islamic insurgents from the Hamas movement Ñ one of them a member of the PA navy Ñ hurled grenades and fired semi-automatic weapons in an early-morning raid near the Israeli-Egyptian border. The attackers were aided by another six Hamas combatants who helped them break through an Israeli electronic border fence.

"They were not discovered by the soldiers," Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, the head of Israel's southern command, said. "They [attackers] stormed the position as they threw grenades and fire."

The four soldiers were identified as Israeli Arab Bedouins. Bedouins often serve as trackers in the military.

The sources said the Hamas attackers were wearing uniforms of the PA security forces. They said Hamas had planned to attack Israeli military positions and Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip after the departure of U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni. Zinni left for Washington on Monday and is expected to return on Jan. 18.

A Hamas leaflet distributed in Gaza said the attack on the Israeli position was, in part, a response to the Israeli capture of a Palestinian boat full of weapons. The weapons were said to have been headed for the Gaza Strip.

"Hamas will not be held hostage to the cursed Sharon who would like to strangle the Palestinian people and place President Yasser Arafat under siege in Ramallah," a leaflet said.

In another development, Israeli authorities arrested a suspected ring of Druse residents who were smuggling weapons from Syria to the West Bank.

Officials said the weapons smuggled from Syria to the Golan Heights included mines and hand grenades.

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