Death Toll Mounts In Israeli-Plo Gunfights

Israeli army radio said five Israelis were killed in the clashes on Thursday. Israel Radio said two of them were soldiers in the Gaza Strip. The fighting was fierce and widespread and dashed US hopes of keeping alive Arab-Israeli peace talks, stalled since right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power 100 days ago.

The death toll mounted rapidly and by mid-afternoon 29 Palestinians and five Israelis were reported killed in the two days of fighting. Medical sources in the Palestinian areas said Israeli troops had shot dead 24 Palestinian police and civilians on Thursday. Clashes erupted near Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and near the PLO-ruled enclave of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem.

 

Two Israeli soldiers were killed when hundreds of Palestinians charged an army post near the isolated Netzarim Jewish settlement south of Gaza City, Israel Radio said. It said two other Israelis were killed in the West Bank town of Nablus, at the tomb of the biblical Joseph. A fifth Israeli was also reported killed.

Palestinians said more than 250 Palestinians were wounded in the West Bank and 50 in Gaza. Israel Radio said more than 30 Israelis were injured.

Netanyahu cut short a visit to Germany to return home to handle the crisis which Israeli media called a war. Netanyahu and Palestinian Yasser Arafat spoke by telephone and discussed the possibility of a meeting to end the fighting, cabinet secretary Danny Naveh told Israel Radio.

Netanyahu called Arafat from Bonn and urged him to take strident action to calm the protest, sparked by Israel's decision to open a controversial archaeological tunnel in Arab East Jerusalem.

Arafat's Palestinian Authority urged Arab states to isolate and punish Israel. The Palestinian delegate to the ArabLeague, Mohamed Sobeih, made the appeal at the start of a one-day Arab League meeting in Cairo.

Palestinian land has been turned into fields of war, on which many martyrs have fallen, Sobeih said.

Washington, which has spent the past five years trying to build Middle East peace, worked frantically behind the scenes to stop the fighting.

We are trying as hard as we can, the United States, to stop the violence and get the two sides back talking about their problems US consul general in Jerusalem, Edward Abington said, touring the scene of the Ramallah clashes in an armoured limousine.

Britain expressed grave concern at the upsurge of violence and urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to show statesmanship to halt the fighting. The Foreign Office said the Middle East peace process was in a precarious state.

French President Jacques Chirac telephoned Arafat yesterday to express support and appeal for calm. Chirac met Netanyahu in Paris on Wednesday.