Gunmen, Rockets Strike Israel

JERUSALEM —  Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and seriously wounded four other people outside the Israeli army’s southern command headquarters in Beersheba on Sunday as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned home from Washington.

In another development likely to provoke an escalation of the military conflict here, Palestinians fired medium-range Kassam-2 rockets from the Gaza Strip onto two farms in Israel’s Negev desert--the first time the Palestinians have directed such weapons toward Israel in their nearly 17-month uprising.

The armed Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for firing the rockets, which landed in fields nearly four miles from the Gazan border in Kibbutz Saad and Moshav Shuva. Nobody was wounded.

Israel recovered three rocket launchers from Palestinian-controlled territory in Gaza and responded to the day’s violence with F-16 aircraft and helicopter gunship strikes on Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s security compound and on a steel factory in Gaza. At least 13 people were wounded by the aerial attacks, including two employees of the United Nations Special Coordinator’s office, which was severely damaged.

Last week, the Israeli army discovered a truckload of Kassam-2 missiles in the West Bank, and the government renewed warnings that it would respond to their use with extraordinary force. With a range of about five to seven miles, the missiles threaten cities well inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

“The terror is increasing,” Sharon said upon returning to Israel. “Arafat is directly responsible for it, and the Palestinian Authority is not taking any measures against it. . . . This compels us to reach decisions in light of the severe escalation.”

The prime minister convened his security Cabinet late Sunday to discuss Israel’s response.

Sharon went to Washington in hopes of persuading President Bush to cut ties with Arafat and look for “alternative” Palestinian leadership. Bush agreed to keep pressing Arafat to crack down on the armed groups sending suicide bombers and gunmen into Israel but said the U.S. would continue working with him.

On Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres criticized Sharon’s efforts to pick his own Palestinian leadership.

“Whoever wants to look for an alternative leadership need not declare it from every corner, because the result is the opposite. The result is that everyone is rallying around Arafat,” Peres told Israel’s Army Radio.

Israel has confined Arafat to the West Bank city of Ramallah since December and has placed tanks outside his headquarters there.

During Sharon’s four-day trip to Washington, the security situation continued to deteriorate, with the killing of an Israeli mother and daughter inside their home in a Jordan Valley settlement, the fatal stabbing of a woman in Jerusalem and the death of a 79-year-old settler in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank.

Then came Sunday’s attack in Beersheba, a city that has been relatively unscathed by the uprising against Israeli occupation. The assault began about 1:30 p.m. when two Palestinians in civilian clothes jumped out of a car and began firing automatic rifles near the gates of the army’s southern command headquarters and a bakery next door.

Many soldiers were outside on their lunch break and quickly began firing back at the attackers, who were shot dead within minutes, according to witnesses and the army.

“The two men burst out of the car and opened fire in every direction,” Capt. Guy Shaham told Israel Radio.

“I drew my pistol and shot back. They sprayed gunfire in every direction. I focused on one of them and shot at him until he fell, and then his friend saw he fell so he ran to a parking lot and soldiers coming out of the base shot him,” the officer said.

The army said one of the assailants was wearing an explosives belt.

The dead soldiers, both women, were identified as Lt. Keren Rothstein, 20, and Pvt. Aya Malaachi, 18.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Beersheba attack, but Hamas lauded it on its Web site and also boasted that the Kassam-2 missiles mean “security for the Zionists is lost.”

After the rocket attacks, Israeli tanks went into Palestinian-controlled Gaza and recovered three launchers with timing devices south of Beit Hanoun. One of the launchers reportedly still contained a rocket.

Palestinian militants in Gaza have repeatedly fired mortars at Israeli communities in and around the strip, but the attacks have rarely caused serious damage or injuries.

“This is clearly not the range of a mortar, which has a range of three kilometers [1.9 miles] max,” said Jacob Dallal, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman.

Dallal said the rockets contained at least 13 pounds of explosives and left craters about 6 feet deep.

“These could have hit anywhere in the city of Sderot,” Dallal said, referring to a community in the Negev about three miles east of Beit Hanoun. “Should rockets fall on cities, that would change the whole configuration of the conflict. That is close to what one sees in a more conventional war.”

At least 836 Palestinians and 256 Israelis have been killed in a cycle of attack and counterattack since the intifada, or uprising, began in September 2000.

Early today, Israeli tanks entered the West Bank city of Nablus for about two hours, a day after an incursion there in which troops in tanks exchanged heavy fire with Palestinians.

Seven Palestinians were wounded during Sunday’s incursion, Palestinian hospital officials said. The Israeli military said its forces searched buildings, arrested several people and left the city after about two hours.

In Gaza, Terje Roed-Larson, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, condemned Israel for using “heavy tonnage” bombs near civilian areas and U.N. facilities.

Roed-Larson said in a statement that “Israeli security needs will not be met by hitting civilian targets or by destroying the Palestinians’ ability to police and maintain order.”

In another development, Israeli police acknowledged that a 14-year-old Palestinian boy detained Friday for the stabbing of a woman in Jerusalem was shot to death and did not die of a heart attack as they previously claimed.

A gang of four Palestinian teenagers was arrested after the fatal stabbing of 25-year-old Moran Amit on Jerusalem’s Sherover Promenade on Friday afternoon.

Police said that they tracked down the East Jerusalem youths and called for them to stop but that they kept running. Police opened fire, injuring one in the arm.

They eventually captured all four, but one of the youths, Samar abu Miala, 14, collapsed and died a few minutes after he was arrested. Police initially said that he had had a heart attack and denied that he had been shot.

On Sunday, police said that there had been no bullet wound on Abu Miala’s body but that an autopsy showed that he had been shot. Palestinian sources said the bullet entered Abu Miala’s body through the rectum, hitting his liver and heart.

The three remaining youths reportedly confessed to stabbing Amit.