|
Israeli settler kills 3 in bus shooting - police
04 Aug 2005 17:51:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
|
(Adds gunman killed, and police and settler remarks) By Cynthia Johnston JERUSALEM, Aug 4 (Reuters) - An Israeli settler in military uniform shot dead three people aboard a bus in an Arab town on Thursday in an attack police said appeared to be "Jewish terror". Police said they believed the gunman was a settler from the West Bank who had left his unit after refusing to take part in Israel's planned withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip, which starts in two weeks. "It seems like Jewish terror against Arabs," police spokesman Avi Zelba told Reuters. At least four others were wounded in the attack. Tensions have been running high over Israel's plan to leave the occupied Gaza Strip and a corner of the West Bank in a plan billed as "disengagement" from conflict with the Palestinians. Israeli army officers have said they fear right-wing Israelis opponents of the pullout could attack Palestinians as a way to stir conflict that would tie down Israeli forces, in an attempt to prevent the evacuation. Israeli Arab parliament member Mohammed Barakeh, quoted by the Haaretz Web site, said: "We are witnessing attempts by extreme right-wing people, terrorists, who want to set the region ablaze and feel they have freedom of action." Settlers, who have vowed peaceful resistance to the Gaza pullout, condemned the attack. "Such incidents cannot be part of the democratic struggle in Israel," said Yesha settler council Benzi Lieberman from a demonstration outside the Gaza Strip where thousands have gathered to protest against the pullout. Police said residents of the northern Galilee town of Shfaram stormed the bus and killed the gunman, after earlier saying he had been arrested. Police were trying to retrieve his body, and some officers were hurt in scuffles. Israeli television showed hundreds of people milling around the bus, whose windows were broken. The bodies of the dead lay covered by sheets on the road outside. The identities of the dead were not immediately made public. Haaretz said the shooting took place after a dispute on the bus. Israeli opponents of the Gaza pullout cite a biblical claim to the land and say the withdrawal amounts to surrender to militants fighting the Jewish state. In the worst attack by a settler on Arabs, Baruch Goldstein gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers in the burial place of the biblical Abraham, the traditional forefather of Jews and Muslims, in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994.
|
|
|
Reset