Security forces on high alert countrywide over holidays

Jerusalem Post ^ | Sep. 15, 2004 | MARGOT DUDKEVITCH

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Security forces have completed their preparations to safeguard the country over the High Holidays.

Thousand of police officers, Border Police soldiers and volunteers have spread out across the nation. Roadblocks have been set up at the entrances to all major cities and towns, and the closure imposed on the Palestinian territories remains in place, at least until the end of Yom Kippur. According to Army Radio, the security establishment has registered fifty terror alerts.

Police will be working double shifts over the holidays and will secure places of entertainment. Police chief Insp.-Gen. Moshe Karadi has put out a call to the public to display awareness and to not hesitate calling the police if they encounter suspicious persons or packages. All public transport has stopped for the holidays, and will resume on Saturday night.

Nine Palestinian gunmen killed in West Bank

Undercover Border Police units (Mistaaravim) attacked four heavily armed Palesitnian fugitives sitting in a central Jenin coffee shop Wednesday, killing 3 and wounding the fourth. They also arrested two others during an operation in the West Bank city. There were no injuries to the Israeli forces.

The gunmen killed in the Jenin raid were in possession of two Kalashnikov assault rifles, an M-16 and two handguns.

Palestinian officials reported that an eleven-year-old girl, Maram Nahli, was killed by Israeli soldiers during an operation in Nablus earlier Wednesday, in which six Fatah gunmen were killed. However, IDF officials said that at no point had soldiers fired in the direction of civilians, and civilian casualties had not been identified. Nevertheless, the Israeli officials did not rule out the possibility that the girl had been killed by shots fired by the Palestinians during the gun battle.

In Nablus, six Palestinians were killed in an extended gun battle with IDF troops. The majority of those killed were senior members of the Fatah Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades who were responsible for numerous attacks against Israelis. At least thirty Palestinians were wounded in clashes with the troops.

In the operation that began late Tuesday night in the city's Casba, soldiers of the naval commando (Shayetet 13) unit surrounded the house where the six fugitives were held up. An exchanges of gunfire ensued, and four of the Palestinians tried to escape shooting as they ran. They were killed in the return fire.

A sixth body was believed to be inside the building. Shots were fired at soldiers as they prepared the house for demolition.

Samaria district commander Col. Yuval told reporters that naval commandos entered the city during the night in order to arrest several senior al Aksa Brigade fugitives.

The soldiers spotted a number of them, who ran into the house of an 80-year old man and refused to surrender to troops outside, he said.

For a number of hours gun battles raged between security forces and the armed fugitives, who at one point attempted to flee the house while shooting at soldiers.

Following the battle, a crowd began to approach the building where the bodies lay in order to snatch the bodies away.

In order to distance the crowds, soldiers fired warning shots in the air. Palestinians also opened fire at the IDF commander's vehicle. Demonstrators from within the crowd shot at the soldiers, who used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them. A Palestinian truck caught fire when a firebomb, thrown at soldiers, exploded nearby.

Col. Yuval, said that 70 percent of terrorist activity in the West Bank is funded by the Hizbullah, who also send instructions and directives to operatives on the ground.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, security forces arrested five Palestinian fugitives, including an Islamic Jihad fugitive in Bethlehem, and other villages in the Jenin, and Nablus areas.

In the Gaza Strip, at least thirteen mortar shells were fired by Palestinians at Israeli communities and IDF positions. In southern Gaza at least four mortars fell inside a community, and nine were directed at an IDF position. Shots were also fired at an IDF post near Rafah Yam in southern Gaza.

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Sounds like a war zone.