Military

DATE=07/26/2002

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ISRAEL / PALESTINIANS (L UPDATE)

NUMBER=2-292468

BYLINE=LARRY JAMES

DATELINE=JERUSALEM

CONTENT=

/// EDS: UPDATES CR 2-292446 ///

INTRO: Palestinian gunmen opened fire on two cars in the West Bank Friday -- killing four Israelis, three of them from the same family. V-O-A's Larry James in Jerusalem also reports three Israelis were wounded in the attacks.

TEXT: Israeli police said there were two separate attacks about four kilometers apart on a road just south of the West Bank town of Hebron. The road is used mostly by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers.

In another incident in the West Bank Friday, a Palestinian man was shot and killed in a confrontation with Israeli troops.

In the early morning hours of Friday, Israeli tanks and a bulldozer moved into Gaza City destroying two metal workshops and a police facility. The Israeli military says a search uncovered several rockets, which the soldiers then destroyed along with mortars and other weapons before demolishing the buildings.

Hundreds of supporters of the Palestinian militant group Hamas took to the streets Friday in Gaza, vowing revenge on Israel for its air strike late Monday that killed senior Hamas official Salah Shehade. Israel has come in for widespread international condemnation for the attack, which also killed 14 other Palestinians, most of them children.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer defended the attack, saying Mr. Shehade had been planning what he called "a mega-attack" against Israel -- packing a truck with a ton of explosives that could have killed hundreds of people.

Meanwhile, an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement is threatening to kill top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Popular Army Front also threatened to kill the heads of the Israeli military and security services.

The threat was broadcast late Thursday on the T-V station of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group.

NEB/LDJ/JWH