Palestinian gunmen killed eight suspected collaborators and Islamic leaders expressed fury at Israel's isolation of Yasser Arafat as Israeli forces tightened their siege of the Palestinian leader's office yesterday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has vowed an "uncompromising war" against terrorism, sent tanks and troops into the West Bank town of Qalqilya overnight in response to a wave of suicide bombings by defiant Palestinian militants.
Israel's four-day-old siege of Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah has provoked fury across the Arab world and a Jordanian official said Amman was considering expelling Israeli ambassador David Dadon in protest.
Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab countries to have signed peace treaties with Israel.
As tensions ran high, two masked Palestinian gunmen entered an intelligence building in the West Bank town of Tulkarm and killed eight prisoners suspected of collaborating with Israel, security sources and witnesses said.
Middle East envoys from the UN, the US, the EU and Russia were apparently blocked from seeing Arafat because of Sharon's policy of cutting him off from the outside world.
"The siege is still imposed around Arafat," Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said. "There are international envoys who planned to visit him but the Israelis are still preventing them from doing so."
Asked if this was the case, Ranaan Gissin, a top adviser to Sharon, said: "Yasser Arafat is in isolation and he is going to remain so until the end of the terrorist threat."
On Sunday night, about 100 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles thrust into the central West Bank town of Qalqilya for the second time in three weeks.
Residents reported heavy machinegun fire and explosions, and said the Israelis had cut power and water supplies before moving in. The army said one soldier was badly wounded and seven were hurt when an explosive detonated during a house search.
Scores of Israeli tanks were poised on the edge of the West Bank town of Tulkarm, Palestinian security sources and residents said. The army said troops had cordoned off the town.
The security sources said Palestinian officers guarding an intelligence building in Tulkarm had left their posts when Israeli tanks moved towards the town, fearing they would come under attack. That allowed the two gunmen to enter and kill the suspected collaborators held there awaiting trial.
Hundreds of Palestinians gathered to view the bodies of the men after they were dragged out to the road. The gunmen fled.
The killing was the deadliest attack on men suspected of helping Israel track wanted militants since the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation 18 months ago.
The latest Israeli incursions into Palestinian-ruled towns followed a televised speech to the nation by Sharon, who promised an "uncompromising war to uproot these savages" and crush what he called a terror campaign directed by Arafat.
Sharon's tough message followed a day of violence in which a suicide bomber killed 15 people in the Israeli port of Haifa and Arafat's guards battled besieging Israeli troops.
The army, which has turned Ramallah into a closed military zone while it tracks down Palestinian militants, said it had rounded up more than 500 men for interrogation.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS