Military

DATE=11/09/2000

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ISRAEL / PALESTINIANS (L)

NUMBER=2-269041

BYLINE=MEREDITH BUEL

DATELINE=BEIT SAHOUR, WEST BANK

CONTENT=

VOICE AT:

INTRO: Israeli combat helicopters fired missiles into a vehicle carrying leaders of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization. One Fatah member was killed along with two women bystanders. VOA Correspondent Meredith Buel has details from the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank.

TEXT: Missiles fired by Israeli helicopter gun ships blasted a vehicle carrying Fatah members in this Palestinian town just outside Bethlehem.

Blood, scorched flesh and craters from the explosions littered the small street where the attack occurred. The vehicle was a mangle of twisted, blackened metal. Karim Sheibat witnessed the assault.

/// SHEIBAT ACT ///

It was a massacre. Six civilians were stopping right there, right there where the cars were hit. Six civilians, two of them, I think, they are dead. I saw them in the hospital, no faces, lots of blood.

/// END ACT ///

Mr. Sheibat's wife, Inam, says a large crowd was in the vicinity to view damage from a separate shelling that occurred the day before. She spoke through a translator.

/// TRANSLATOR ACT ///

Actually, yesterday our house was shelled by the Israeli helicopters, so today everybody came to see the damage that happened. Suddenly we saw around four helicopters surrounding my house, and exactly when the youth went out of the house they started shelling the cars.

/// END ACT ///

Fatah officials accused the Israelis of deliberately assassinating the Palestinian official, identified as Hussein Abayat. The Palestinians vowed to retaliate.

The Israeli Army says the Fatah officials were targeted because they were involved in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Israeli Major General Yitzik Eitan says the rocketing was justified, and more attacks can be expected on what the army says are groups responsible for the violence.

/// EITAN ACT ///

The Israeli Defense Forces (I-D-F) will continue acting in order to defend its citizens, its soldiers, its villages. The State of Israel can not standby in the face of ongoing acts of terror against its people. There is no sovereign state in the world that would have acted with the high level of restraint Israel has shown in these times.

/// END ACT ///

In a separate incident Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager involved in protests in the Gaza Strip.

The violence comes after six weeks of continuing clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. (SIGNED)

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