Palestinian baby among dead in drive-by shooting

HEBRON - Israeli gunmen have killed three Palestinians, including a 3-month-old boy, in a drive-by shooting near the West Bank town of Hebron.

Shahar Ayalon, Israel's police chief in the West Bank, said gunmen waiting in a car at the side of a road opened fire on a Palestinian vehicle, then turned and headed for the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat.


Asked if Jews carried out the shooting, Ayalon told Israeli Army Radio: "That's what we think."


Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office issued a statement condemning "all forms of terror and violence, regardless of who committed them" and expressing regret at the loss of innocent lives.


"We will spare no effort to bring the perpetrators to justice," he said.


The three dead and three others in the car who were wounded were all from the same family.


Israel Radio reported that a shadowy group calling itself "The Committee for Safety on the Roads," a name alluding to the danger Jewish settlers face from Palestinian gunmen, had claimed responsibility for the night-time shooting.


"The windshield of their car was full of bullet holes and there were pools of blood inside," said Thabet Tamazi, a cousin of the victims.


The Palestinian Authority said it held the Israeli Government "fully responsible for this crime against our people."


"We appeal to the industrialised nations' summit to take an immediate, urgent and decisive decision to send international monitors to the Palestinian territories to protect our people from the oppression of the occupation Army and the brutal crimes conducted by the settler militias."


In Italy earlier, Group of Eight foreign ministers urged Israel and the Palestinians to allow international monitors to oversee a US-backed truce-to-talks plan. Israel rejected the call.


The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, described any such deployment as "a step that Israel doesn't want."


Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, in a telephone conversation with United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said observers would contribute nothing towards stemming the bloodshed.


"Instead, they will give the Palestinians the impression that they have a shield behind which they can continue violence and terror."


The G8 ministers were prompted to move the issue into the spotlight after a week of bloodletting that nearly wiped out a US-brokered ceasefire that was to take effect last month.


"We believe that in these circumstances, third-party monitoring, accepted by both parties, would serve their interests in implementing the Mitchell report," the ministers said in a separate statement from their final communique.


In making deployment of monitors contingent on the agreement of both the Israelis and Palestinians, the statement echoed language in a truce-to-talks plan charted by a panel led by former US senator George Mitchell.


"In light of the alarming developments in the Middle East we reaffirm that the Mitchell report is the only way forward," the statement said.


Israel says the Mitchell plan, which also calls for a freeze in construction at Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, should be phased in only after a cessation of violence. Palestinians say it is a package deal, to be carried out all at once.

- REUTERS


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