Arafat aide is killed as Israelis hit Ramallah
Violence intensifies before the arrival of U.S.
peace envoy
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches AP, Reuters
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
International Herald Tribune
RAMALLAH An officer in Yasser Arafat's guard
and an Italian war photographer were killed
Wednesday as Israel pressed on with its biggest
offensive in decades against the Palestinians on
the eve of a U.S. peace mission.
The latest bloodshed left little room for hope that
the U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni, who was due to
arrive in Israel on Thursday, would be able to
persuade Israelis and Palestinians to end the
bloodshed after failed missions in December and
January.
"Zinni will not succeed if we do not help him,"
Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who is the
government's leading dove, told Channel Two
television. His comments implied criticism of the
two-week-old campaign in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, now involving 20,000 troops, begun by
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon after Palestinian
attacks brought intensified calls from the right for
tougher action.
Abu Fadi, a deputy commander in the West Bank
city of Ramallah for Arafat's Force 17 elite guard,
was killed in the fighting, Palestinian security
officials said. They gave no details. The
photographer, Raffaele Ciriello, who had worked
in many of the world's hot spots, was shot six
times in the chest while covering the Israeli
takeover of Ramallah, the first foreign journalist to
die in 17 months of conflict.
Palestinian hospital officials said Ciriello, a
freelance journalist, was killed by Israeli gunfire
after tanks stormed into Ramallah on Tuesday, a
day in which 41 people were killed on both sides
in one of the bloodiest cycles of violence so far.
But the army, which tightened its grip on
Ramallah on Wednesday against the backdrop of
daily Palestinian attacks in Israel, said it did not
know the circumstances of Ciriello's death and
had opened an investigation.
"It is important to remember that there have been
exchanges of fire in Ramallah, and that this was
the reason the army closed off the area to
journalists," said Lieutenant Colonel Olivier
Rafowicz, an army spokesman.
About 150 armored vehicles, including tanks,
thrust into Ramallah and nearby refugee camps
Tuesday, tearing up roads and crushing cars in
the main Palestinian commercial and political hub
in the West Bank, witnesses said.
Hundreds of spent cartridges were scattered
around Ramallah's central square following heavy
shooting in the area overnight. Israeli tanks and
armored vehicles were stationed at schools and on
road junctions throughout the city.
Hospital officials said Israeli gunfire and shelling
wounded at least 14 Palestinians on Wednesday.
They said one person was in critical condition with
a gunshot wound to the head.
The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, in his
harshest criticism of Israel, urged it to stop "the
bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the
unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions
and the daily humiliation of ordinary
Palestinians."
The UN Security Council passed a U.S.-drafted
resolution referring for the first time to a
Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel.
The 14-0 vote late Tuesday, with Syria abstaining,
marked the first time the 15-nation council had
approved a resolution on the Middle East since
October 2000 and was the first recent text
touching on the region to be written by
Washington. The U.S. ambassador to the UN,
John Negroponte, said Washington's move aimed
to give momentum to Zinni's mission, which
coincides with a trip to the region by Vice
President Dick Cheney. Zinni was scheduled to
arrive Thursday. On two previous visits, he failed
to coax the two sides toward a cease-fire, and U.S.
officials have said he carries no new solutions to
ease what has become the deadliest violence in
Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in a
generation.
Reports from Washington suggested that Zinni
might propose stationing U.S. monitors if a
cease-fire accord could be reached. But calls for
revenge here have grown louder in recent weeks,
all but drowning out pleas for restraint.
In Ramallah and the nearby refugee camp of
Amari, Israeli armored forces invaded from three
directions, firing as they went. Tanks advanced to
within 200 meters (650 feet) of the Arafat
compound just a day after Israel announced he
was free to travel in Gaza and the West Bank after
having been cooped up in Ramallah for three
months.
Israeli forces have penetrated parts of Ramallah
before, but never as deeply, or in such massive
force. Ramallah and its surrounding
neighborhoods have been a base for numerous
suicide bombers and other militants, prompting
Israeli officials to brand it a hotbed of terror.
The town was also the scene of one of the most
indelibly brutal images of the current fighting,
when two Israeli reservists were lynched by a
Palestinian mob after they made a wrong turn and
blundered into town in October 2000.
It "is the main base for terrorism," said Colonel
Gal Hirsch, the Israeli operations chief in the West
Bank. "That's why we are there." (Reuters, WP)
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