A West Bank Arab youth was killed in the Jenin refugee camp and another was seriously wounded Thursday when patrolling Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians who were attacking with rocks and iron bars.
The soldiers reportedly were unable to disperse the mob by other means.
Israel Defense Force soldiers also destroyed two houses in Jenin that belonged to two known participants in the lynch killing Wednesday in nearby Kabatiya village of an Arab employee of the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank.
An angry mob of about 1,000 villagers had set fire to the house of the victim and killed him, hanging his body from an electric utility pole.
The victim, Muhammad Ayed A-Ragheb, 29, worked for the traffic department in Jenin and was licensed to carry a weapon. He opened fire on the attackers with a Uzi submachine gun, killing a young villager and wounding 13 others. The slain villager was described in conflicting reports as a 3-year-old girl, a 7-year-old-boy or a teenager.
VILLAGE UNDER CURFEW
Kabatiya village was placed under curfew and 20 residents were detained for questioning. The shooting and apparent lynching was the worst incident of inter-Arab violence since disturbances began in the administered territories more than two months ago.
Arabs employed by the civil administration have been threatened in leaflets widely circulated in the territories and in broadcasts by the terrorist-operated “Free Jerusalem” radio station in Syria. Other Arabs suspected of collaborating with Israel have been murdered or attacked, but this lynching was the first reported.
A-Ragheb was assaulted by virtually the entire village. His house was reportedly besieged for five hours before he panicked and fired on the mob. It was not clear whether he was burned to death and then hanged or was hanged alive and electrocuted by contact with high tension wires. His body was mutilated.
When the wounded villagers were brought to a hospital in Jenin, rumors spread that Israel Defense Force soldiers had shot them. IDF troops surrounded Kabatiya but were not in the village at the time of the shooting.
The IDF troops refrain from entering Arab villages if possible to avoid friction with the local inhabitants. They used tear gas to break up riots that erupted in Jenin Thursday morning after residents of a nearby refugee camp stoned passing vehicles and burned tires on the road.
SIX OTHERS INJURED
Disturbances were reported from other centers throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip Thursday. Five Arabs and a border policemen were injured in the unrest.
Otherwise, the streets in the administered territories were practically deserted in the second day of an Arab general strike called by the Palestine Liberation Organization in advance of the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz in Israel Thursday evening.
For the second consecutive day, only a handful of Arab laborers employed in Israel showed up for their jobs. The buses and vans that usually carry them to work were blocked by barbed wire and nail-studded boards strewn across the roads to Israel.
Haaretz reported Thursday that Gen. Amram Mitzna has dismissed an IDF major who was involved in the shooting incident in Kfar Faur in which seven residents of the territories were wounded. The incident is still under military police investigation.
Al Hamishmar reported that, according to signed testimonies of eyewitnesses and death certificates, three Gaza Strip residents died as a result of severe blows inflicted by IDF soldiers after the dispersion of a demonstration in the area earlier this month.
The certificates were sent by Member of Knesset Dedi Zucker of the Citizens Rights Movement to Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and chief military advocate Brig. Gen. Amnon Strachnow.
Zucker’s report refers to two incidents, one involving two residents of the El-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, allegedly beaten severely by IDF soldiers who entered their home after a demonstration earlier this month and who later took them to a field for further beatings.
In the second incident, a 68-year-old man was allegedly beaten when he attempted to keep soldiers from entering his house to search for a demonstrator who had taken refuge there.
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