Posted on 06/24/2002 5:31:15 AM PDT by vance
Palestinian agents shoot at protesters as Hamas leader placed under house arrest
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH
Palestinian security officials opened fire to disperse demonstrators while enforcing a house arrest order Monday on Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin, Palestinian sources said.
There were no reported casualties.
The aim of the order issued late Sunday night is "to safeguard the national interests of the Palestinian people," a Palestinian official said.
Yassin's son Abdel Hamin said the family had been notified in advance of the decision and that Palestinian security officials were positioned several hundred meters from the home.
On Monday a group of demonstrators tried to stage a protest in front of Yassin's house, before being dispersed by gunfire.
The PA acted as its leader Yasser Arafat came under increasing pressure from the US and Europe to crack down on the ringleaders of a series of recent suicide bomb attacks against Israel, for which Hamas has claimed responsibility.
In the past, Palestinian police have cut Yassin's telephone line to his home and confiscated the mobile phones of his bodyguards and sons to limit his outside contact.
When last placed under house arrest in December 2001, Hamas and Arafat supporters clashed. Two Palestinian police cars were set ablaze and a Hamas supporter died in the fighting.
Then, Yassin was under house arrest for about 1 1/2 months, until his detention unofficially ended in January with heavy IDF bombardment of Palestinian infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
He's an old blind guy in a wheel chair. Where does he go and how often? To the local mosque a few times a week, maybe?
I can't tell you how relieved I am. However, can you imagine the international outcry if, no "reported" casualties or not, it was the IDF who had been shooting at these Arabs?
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