JERUSALEM — Four Israelis, including a 5-year-old girl, were shot dead in their houses by Palestinian gunmen who dressed as soldiers and snuck into a West Bank Israeli settlement Saturday.
The shooters sliced through the protective perimeter fence of the Adora settlement just west of Hebron, slinking from residence to residence and firing at people in their bedrooms. In one house, a couple was shot — the woman fatally. In another home, a young girl was murdered; her mother and two younger brothers were wounded.
Yaakov Shefi, the father of the slain girl, was in the synagogue and rushed home when he heard the shots. Shefi, a policeman, said his wife was sitting with their daughter and two sons, aged 4 and 1, when the gunmen broke into the room and sprayed them with gunfire.
"She remembers pushing the children under the bed. She said, 'Be quiet and don't cry, so that they don't come back,"' Shefi said.
Anat Harari said the gunman shot at her through the kitchen window, wounding her in the shoulder. She fled to the bathroom, where she phoned her parents on her mobile phone.
"I am on the floor, bleeding in a pool of blood, in the bathroom. I stay on the phone with my parents. I am talking to my parents without stopping. I tell them what is going on. I tell them, it's not the army, it's terrorists in disguise. And I wait for help," Harari said later from a hospital bed.
Many of the settlers were attending Sabbath prayers in the synagogue when the attack began. Some rushed to the area to confront the infiltrators but were unable to find them, said Lt. Gen. Amos Ben Avraham.
At least seven were injured in the sneak attack, which began around 9 a.m. Afterwards, the shooters disappeared, according to Avraham.
It was the worst attack on a West Bank settlement since Israeli forces burst into the area on March 29 in an operation to hunt down Palestinian militants.
After the Adora attack, Israeli troops launched a large-scale manhunt in the Hebron region on Saturday, searching Taffuh, the closest Palestinian village. In Hebron, Palestinian security officers abandoned their buildings, expecting an Israeli reprisal.
Israeli troops conducted a house-to-house search in Adora, fearing that at least one gunman may be hiding and holding hostages. But they found no one.
The Adora killings ratcheted up tensions between Palestinians and Israelis after Israel withdrew from several main towns last week and negotiations were progressing to resolve two long standoffs.
Overnight, Israeli troops withdrew from Qalqiliya, a town in the northern West Bank, after a daylong incursion. As it withdrew, the army underlined that it would enter any areas "it feels necessary in order to thwart terrorist activity."
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday's attack. It came several days after Israeli forces killed Marwan Zalloum, the Hebron leader of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, a militia linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Israel said it held Arafat's Palestinian Authority responsible, as it does for nearly all Palestinian attacks against Israel or its settlements.
Israeli Cabinet Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, on hearing about the settlement attack, said, "The war against terror is not over." Just before Israel launched its West Bank offensive, a Palestinian attacker killed four Israelis in a West Bank settlement. In December, gunman attacked a bus near a settlement in the northern West Bank, killing 10 people.
In their West Bank offensive, Israeli forces entered villages in the Hebron area, but there were not the large-scale occupations seen elsewhere. Israel scaled back its operation last week, withdrawing from the city centers of several main towns.
Israel and the Palestinians, meanwhile, tried to find ways to resolve standoffs in Ramallah and Bethlehem, where Israel has said it won't completely withdraw its forces until wanted Palestinians in both surrender.
A Palestinian negotiator, Salah Taameri, consulted with Arafat at his besieged headquarters about Israeli proposals to end the 25-day standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where some 200 people, including 30 militiamen, were under siege. After a nearly three-hour meeting at the Ramallah compound, Taameri returned to Bethlehem.
The focus of negotiations to resolve the standoff centered on the fate of six wanted men holed up inside — whether they will be escorted to the Gaza Strip, as the Palestinians propose, or be sent into exile, as Israel demands.
Palestinians inside the church said by telephone that Israeli snipers shot one man walking in the church courtyard Saturday, wounding him in the abdomen. The Palestinians were trying to arrange his safe evacuation through the international Red Cross.
A U.N. fact-finding mission, which had been due to arrive Saturday to start an investigation into a battle in Jenin refugee camp, was delayed a day because of the Sabbath. Palestinian say Israeli forces indiscriminately killed civilians in the northern West Bank camp. Israel denies the accusation, saying casualties were mainly Palestinian militants killed in fierce gunbattles.
In the second standoff, at Arafat's Ramallah compound, Israel demands the Palestinians hand over six wanted men inside. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Secretary of State Colin Powell by telephone Friday that he was willing to release Arafat from confinement if he agreed to leave for Gaza or anywhere in the West Bank without the wanted men, an Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.
It appeared unlikely Arafat would agree since he has said he would not hand over the men — five of whom allegedly were involved in the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister and the sixth in arms smuggling.
President Bush repeatedly has demanded Israel leave the Palestinian towns. He said Friday he'd had enough of the Israeli incursions. "It's now time to quit it altogether," Bush said.
Israeli forces pulled out of Qalqiliya in the northern West Bank late Friday night.
The army said it had "neutralized" three explosives-making laboratories in Qalqiliya and arrested 20 Palestinians, including 11 who remained in custody after troops left the town.
Raed Nazal, the local leader of a radical PLO faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was killed in a firefight.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Better go and talk to your buddy Arabfat some more Colon Bowel.
This is no coincidence. The Muslims' hatred of Jews means they not only don't avoid attacking them on religious holidays and in religious places, but they purposely use Jew's religious holidays and gathering places against them.
And the Muslims don't accidentally kill women and children. If they are Jews, they are targets for the Muslims. Sick bastards.
Bush and Sharon can be held responsible for their country's responding to 'terrorists'; but, Arafat cannot be held responsible for his people acting as 'terrorists'. The 'leader' must take the blame as well as the credit. 'Arafat, it is your fault that these people are dead.'