Israeli forces stepped up fierce reprisal raids Monday, killing 19 Palestinians, including a mother and her three children, in response to a wave of devastating Palestinian attacks.
Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a building in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's headquarters compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah -- he was unhurt -- and F-16 warplanes flattened a security headquarters in Bethlehem.
Tanks raided a West Bank refugee camp following Israel's vow to "put the brakes on Palestinian terror" after 22 Israelis died in weekend attacks.
The violence has thrown international peace efforts to end 17 months of conflict deeper into doubt but prompted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to propose Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hold summit talks.
"We are in a harsh war against a cruel and bloodthirsty enemy," Sharon told a special session of the Israeli parliament. "I am sure that finally we will be victorious and peace will come to this house."
But Jibril al-Rajoub, Palestinian preventive security chief for the West Bank, told Reuters: "These are massacres and it is these crimes that make suicide bombers out of our people and bring about retaliation and more victims and bloodshed."
The Palestinians have been incensed by army raids into two West Bank refugee camps last week which killed up to 30 people and said the weekend attacks avenged their deaths.
An Israeli tank shell hit a car carrying the family of a member of the Islamic militant group Hamas in Ramallah, killing at least six people, including the man's wife, his daughters aged 13 and 14, and 10-year-old son.
The Israeli army said it had targeted a carload of armed Palestinians but expressed "deep regret" that it had hit a vehicle carrying civilians.
Hamas militant Hussein Abu Kwaik, who was not in the car when it was hit, said his family's deaths would be avenged. "We will continue the path of resistance until the departure of the last occupation soldiers from our land," he said.
The tank shelling also destroyed another car that was nearby, killing a Palestinian man and his son.
AIR STRIKE AND RAIDS
At least three people were hurt in the F-16 raid that destroyed the four-story security headquarters in Bethlehem, hospital officials said.
The Palestinians often evacuate buildings when they fear they will come under attack.
In Gaza City, witnesses said an Israeli gunboat fired a missile at Arafat's seaside headquarters but it exploded on the beach.
Troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships had entered two refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before dawn and fought gunmen following Israel's announcement it would exert constant military pressure on the Palestinians.
The Israeli army shot dead at least three people in the Rafah camp in the Gaza Strip and killed nine in the Jenin camp in the West Bank, hospital sources said. Dozens were wounded.
The army also opened fire on a Palestinian ambulance near the scene of fighting in Jenin, killing a doctor and wounding three medics. The doctor was identified as Khalil Suleiman, the head of local emergency services.
Army spokesman Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey said soldiers fired because the ambulance sped toward them. "It later became clear the passengers were likely non-combatants, although it is still not clear why the vehicle exploded," he said.
But a medic wounded in the incident denied the army's account, saying: "We were driving at a snail's pace."
He said an oxygen tank had exploded in the ambulance. Kitrey called the incident a "tragic aberration."
VOW OF RETALIATION
Israeli forces went into action to retaliate for one of the bloodiest waves of Palestinian attacks since the start of an uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000 that has killed at least 943 Palestinians and 306 Israelis.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Arafat's Fatah movement, said it carried out the weekend assaults, including a suicide bombing in Jerusalem and a sniper attack at a West Bank checkpoint.
The group said it was avenging the Palestinians killed in the Israeli raids on refugee camps last week.
Heavy street fighting erupted with gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp after the army sent in tanks for what it called a search for militants and weapons in a camp it regards as a stronghold of militant groups.
The camp's streets were deserted by nightfall, but machinegun fire continued and red tracer bullets cut through the sky.
Troops also shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint near Qalqilya in the West Bank Monday morning.
Mubarak, on his first day of talks with U.S. leaders, proposed a meeting between Sharon and Arafat in an interview with CNN. He also said Sharon had asked him to arrange a secret meeting with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah to discuss a Saudi peace proposal.
The plan calls for complete Israeli withdrawal from all Arab land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war in return for full normalization of Arab ties with Israel.
(China Daily March 5, 2002)
