Three Jewish children in Jerusalem were injured in a bomb explosion on the eve of Simchat Torah during a bloody weekend of violence in which at least two Arabs were killed and dozens wounded in the administered territories.
The weekend also was marked by a violent confrontation between the Israel Defense Force and members of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s extremist Kach movement.
About a half million Palestinians were placed under curfew in the Gaza Strip, where some of the worst rioting occurred.
But Israelis were shocked most by the wounding of three young sisters Sunday, when a booby-trapped loaf of Sabbath challah exploded in a grocery store.
The victims, Semadar Haddad, 12, and her sisters, Inbal, 7, and Hadas, 5, were hospitalized to remove shrapnel from their legs. Their wounds were reported to be light.
The youngsters are residents of the Musrara neighborhood. The incident occurred at shop in the adjacent ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim, near the border between East and West Jerusalem.
Another challah bomb exploded Sunday in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, without causing casualties or damage. It was tossed into the street after the shopkeeper and a customer became suspicious of evidence of tampering.
ARAB FATALITIES IN HEBRON
The Arab fatalities occurred Friday in Hebron: one in a clash with security forces and the other under unclear circumstances involving an armed Jewish settler.
The incidents began when a car driven by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leader of the militant settlers movement Gush Emunim, came under a barrage of rocks in Hebron. Levinger’s four children were in the car.
Levinger fired into the air. IDF soldiers pursued the rock-throwers, firing tear gas and live bullets. A local Arab merchant, Kaed Hassan Sallah, was fatally wounded.
Arabs in Hebron blamed Levinger for Sallah’s death. The IDF is investigating the incident.
Shortly afterward, an Arab youth was shot to death by soldiers during a rock-throwing incident on the edge of town.
Arabs in Hebron promptly called a general strike. As the news spread, clashes developed throughout the territories between security forces and Palestinians. About 18 Arabs were wounded.
The strike continued Monday to protest a decision by the Israeli authorities not to reopen schools.
KACH SIT-DOWN STRIKE
The IDF also had to contend with a sit-down strike by angry Jewish settlers at the spot in Hebron where Levinger’s car was stoned. The army declared the area a closed military zone and cordoned it off. The settlers threatened to resume their demonstration as soon as it was reopened.
A group of 20 Kach activists were arrested over the weekend, after violently resisting soldiers who attempted to remove them from an old synagogue in the West Bank town of Jericho, near the Dead Sea.
The Kach group was trying to establish a settlement illegally at the synagogue site.
It was learned, meanwhile, that the army intends to bring criminal charges against another three soldiers suspected of killing Arab residents of the Gaza Strip in disregard of regulations.
Four IDF soldiers were charged with manslaughter last week in the death of a resident of the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza.
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