Posted on 11/10/2002 8:06:38 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Five people were killed and three injured when terrorists infiltrated Kibbutz Metzer, near the Green Line, close to midnight Sunday and opened fire. Police sources said that the bodies of three adults and two children had been found.
According to initial reports, it appeared that the terrorists entered a home and opened fire, after first firing on kibbutz members walking from the dining room to their homes. Israel Radio later reported that three people were killed in a home and two near the dining room.
The security coordinator at the kibbutz spotted at least one of the terrorists and opened fire, but failed to hit him.
Large numbers of police and Border Police, who used flares to light up the area, searched the kibbutz after midnight, with the help of a helicopter, but it appeared that the terrorists had succeeded in fleeing the kibbutz.
Residents were confined to their homes and security forces imposed a blackout on the kibbutz, which is located on the Israeli side of the Green Line, north of Tul Karm.
"We are all closed up in our houses. We heard the shots and turned off the lights and shut the doors," kibbutz resident Oded Shahar told Channel Two television.
First-aid teams who rushed to the scene of the attack were barred from entering Metzer for more than an hour by security forces who feared that the terrorists might still be inside the kibbutz.
Initial reports had first spoken of one terrorist having infiltrated the kibbutz, but northern police chief Ya'akov Borovsky later told Israel Radio that based on the number of shots fired and the ballistics of the bullets, it was likely the attack had been carried out by more than one gunman.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, claimed responsibility for the attack in phone calls to news agencies.
There have been a number of warnings recently of plans to carry out an attack at Metzer and security forces recently held a drill with residents there.
Officials in the defense establishment suspect that the shooting may have been carried out by members of the same cell which tried to penetrate Israel earlier in the day, near Kibbutz Metzer, in order to carry out a suicide attack.
In that incident, two Palestinians were killed when their car exploded after they were stopped by a Border Police patrol.
"The Palestinian terror machine doesn't miss a beat," said David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, after troops had foiled the attack.
Also Sunday, the army said it arrested a 15-year-old youth from the West Bank city of Nablus on his way to carry out a suicide attack and a senior Hamas member from the West Bank town of Hebron.
Border Police sappers on Sunday defused two explosive devices, weighing 160 kilograms found in hothouses in the Gaza Strip settlement of Morag.
IDF pulls out of Jenin after senior Islamic Jihad militant killed
Earlier Sunday, the IDF pulled back to the outskirts of Jenin, two weeks after troops backed by heavy armour swept into the West Bank city in search of militants behind suicide attacks in Israel, witnesses said.
The army left the city center a day after soldiers in Jenin killed Iyad Sawalhe, who topped Israel's most-wanted list. He was killed during a gun battle with IDF troops Saturday afternoon, after the soldiers entered his home in an effort to arrest him. Three soldiers from the Golani Brigade were lightly wounded in the exchange of fire.
The army said that with his death, the majority of the IDF's goals in the Jenin operation had been achieved. Some 200 Palestinians were arrested in the operation, Israel Radio reported.
A senior IDF commander said that the army demolished more than 10 homes belonging to militants and their families during the Jenin operation.
An IDF commander who was part of the operation told Army Radio on Sunday that the terror infrastructure in the city had been dealt a severe blow.
The Islamic Jihad leadership vowed, however, that it would not be deterred by IDF moves to cripple the militant movement.
"This operation and crime will not break our strength and our resistance and our jihad will continue," Sheikh Abdallah Shami, an Islamic Jihad leader in the Gaza Strip, told Reuters. "The Islamic Jihad will respond to this crime and our strike will be even more painful."
Soldier killed Saturday in Gaza blast laid to rest
Sergeant-Major Madin Grifat, who was killed Saturday by an explosion close to the Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim, was laid to rest Sunday at 2:30 P.M. in the cemetery at his home village of Beit Zarzir, in northern Israel.
The 23-year-old tracker was critically wounded and an IDF officer sustained moderate injuries in the explosion, which targeted troops from the Givati brigade operating in the area.
Grifat later died of his wounds in hospital. The officer, a Givati company commander, was taken to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva.
Islamic Jihad took responsiblity for the attack, saying it was in response to Sawalhe's death.
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