RAMALLAH, West Bank (REUTERS) — An Israeli helicopter fired a missile near Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Wednesday, but he emerged unscathed as Israel retaliated with a fury for the killing of six Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
“Arafat and his aides are safe in his office,” Mohammed Dahlan, a Palestinian security chief, told Reuters after the missile struck an intelligence facility several yards away in the presidential compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
It was the closest Israel has come to harming Arafat, under Israeli siege in Ramallah, in nearly 17 months of bloodshed.
The Ramallah helicopter strike, in which missiles also were fired at several Palestinian security targets, followed a naval and air bombardment in Gaza City, which local hospitals said killed four people at Arafat’s seaside headquarters there.
On the edge of the Palestinian-ruled city of Nablus in the West Bank, Israeli forces killed six Palestinian policemen in several confrontations, local officials said.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the operations that followed the killing by Palestinian gunmen of six soldiers manning a checkpoint near Ramallah late Tuesday.
The attack, in which the soldiers were shot at close range in a caravan, was the deadliest against troops in the West Bank or Gaza since a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000.
The latest deaths raised the number of people killed over the past two days in one of the worst spasms of Israeli-Palestinian violence to 32.
In addition to the attack on Arafat’s Gaza headquarters, an Israeli F-16 warplane bombed a Palestinian police facility in the city, and helicopters fired more than two dozen missiles at a security compound known as Ansar 2, Palestinian officials said.
Helicopters also attacked a target in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses said.
The Israeli checkpoint deaths were likely to increase right-wing pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for stronger military action against the Palestinians and boost calls from the left for a unilateral pullout in the West Bank and Gaza.
Sharon has said he has no intention of toppling or physically harming Arafat.
At least 871 Palestinians and 273 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian revolt began.
Sharon to convene security cabinet
Sharon was due to convene his security cabinet Wednesday for a previously scheduled session to discuss the mounting Israeli death toll.
Ten Israelis and 22 Palestinians, including two suicide bombers, have been killed since Monday.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Arafat’s Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack at al-Ariq checkpoint, some four miles northwest of Ramallah.
In a statement, the brigades said it was responding to a surge in Palestinian deaths.
The incident was another blow to the Israeli army, which has buried seven soldiers in the past week, including three killed in the Gaza Strip by a mine that blew up a Merkava tank, the pride of its armored corps.
Dore Gold, a Sharon adviser, again pointed a finger at Arafat, who Israel accuses of doing nothing to rein in militants.
“The Palestinian Authority has again delivered its daily dose of death with the murder of these innocent Israelis,” Gold told Reuters. “They want to break the will of Israel, to break the unity of our society. We will not be broken.”
Arafat Confined
Palestinian officials have said Israel’s confinement of Arafat to Ramallah limits his ability to prevent anti-Israeli attacks. Israel has said it will maintain the siege until he hands over militants who killed an Israeli cabinet minister in October.
In the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, a Palestinian bomber tried to board an Israeli civilian bus outside the Jewish settlement of Mehola Tuesday, the army said. He got only to the second step before the driver pushed him off and sped away.
Witnesses said the Palestinian bolted and blew himself up in a field. There were no other casualties.
“He looked suspicious because he was wearing a jacket zipped to the collar,” driver Shalom Dray told Israeli television, noting the balmy weather in the area. “Thank God that I saved 50 people on the bus.”
