The Palestinian prime minister said that his security forces had arrested a number of suspects in the killings of two off-duty Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and had given Israeli authorities weapons taken from the dead men by their attackers.
Sharing a podium on Saturday with Israeli President Shimon Peres at an economic conference near Tel Aviv, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad expressed "heartfelt" condolences to the families of the Israelis and sought to limit diplomatic fallout for peace talks that just restarted.
"In spite of our best efforts, from time to time our relations get tested with an incident like this unfortunately," Fayyad said. "This is a sad reality. It's something that we have to deal with."
PHOTO: AP
Peres responded positively, speaking, like Fayyad, in English.
"The way you expressed yourself -- and your government did -- on the last incident is encouraging for us," he said. "It was a painful experience, but we are listening very carefully to your reaction, both in what you said and what you do."
The two armed off-duty soldiers were hiking on Friday in hills north of the Palestinian town of Hebron in the West Bank when they were attacked by a group of Palestinian gunmen in a car.
They returned fire and killed one of their attackers before they died.
Both the Israelis were in their 20s and residents of the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, close to Hebron where about 500 Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among some 160,000 Palestinians in Hebron in an atmosphere of mutual hostility.
A female companion hiking with the soldiers, also from Kiryat Arba, fled the attack and escaped unharmed after hiding among trees.
A statement from the Yesha settlers' council blamed the attack on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's recent initiative to seek Cabinet approval for the release of Palestinians involved in failed attacks on Israelis -- an effort to trade them for an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants in June last year.
The killings posed a new challenge for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations formally relaunched at a US-hosted Mideast summit last month.
A key Israeli demand is that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rein in Palestinian militant groups and Fayyad said on Saturday the arrests were proof of his government's determination to do so.
"We have suspects in custody already. We are coordinating and cooperating with the Israeli security services, weapons have already been returned to Israeli security in connection with this particular incident," he said. "So it's not only strong words of condemnation, it's action."
Fayyad did not say how many suspects had been arrested or give further details and the Israeli military had no immediate confirmation of the arrests.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS