Post by RedFlag32 on Mar 14, 2006 20:46:08 GMT
Palestinian prisoners forced to strip
Saadat surrenders after Israeli jail siege
Head of Israeli central command says day-long siege of Jericho jail has been completed successfully.
By Imad Abu Sunbul - JERICHO, West Bank
A Palestinian militant leader surrendered to Israeli troops Tuesday after a day-long siege of a West Bank jail sparked an unprecedented wave of abductions and anti-Western violence across the Palestinian territories.
Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, walked out of the cell block where he had taken refuge in the Jericho jail along with other militants jailed with him for their role in the 2001 murder of a far-right Israeli minister.
He was then put into the back of an Israeli army jeep, an AFP correspondent witnessed, ending a massive Israeli assault on the prison in the normally sleepy oasis town of Jericho.
The head of Israeli central command General Yair Naveh said the operation had been completed successfully.
Israeli troops had pounded the compound with tank and missile fire through the day in a bid to force the militants' surrender. Two Palestinian security guards were killed and 23 others wounded.
The operation came minutes after British monitors were withdrawn from the prison, prompting furious charges of collusion from the Palestinians.
At least nine hostages, most of them foreigners, were being held in the Gaza Strip and British and US offices were attacked and ransacked across the territories.
The Palestinian Authority called for an immediate halt to the raid and said it had told Israel that Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas was willing to keep the militants in jail after talks failed to end the standoff.
A senior Israeli officer told reporters that the army would not negotiate with the wanted prisoners.
"It's very simple, either they give in and get out on their own, or they will be killed," he said.
But Saadat had voiced defiance as he took refuge in one of the prison buildings along with fellow prisoners and some Palestinian security personnel.
"Our choice is to fight or to die. We will not surrender," he had told Al-Jazeera television in a telephone interview.
Saadat and three other PFLP members have been jailed in Jericho, a prison under US and British supervision, since August 2002 after his militant faction claimed the 2001 killing of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Amid security chaos that threatens to deal a further blow to the moribund peace process, four people, three of them foreigners, were kidnapped at gunpoint from a luxury Palestinian hotel on the Gaza City seafront.
Gunmen also kidnapped the Swiss head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip in an apparent bid to force Israel to halt the Jericho raid.
A leftist militant group close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Che Guevara Brigades, said it had kidnapped two French women working for medical charity Medecins du Monde in the Gaza Strip.
Two Australian teachers working in Gaza were taken hostage for two hours before being surrendered to security forces.
Palestinian police shot dead a militant from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and wounded seven others after using new live fire orders in response to clashes.
And in a hostage-taking in the West Bank, a US teacher was briefly kidnapped by militants from the Arab American University in the northern town of Jenin, in an abduction was claimed by the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Israeli Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said the raid was being undertaken to prevent the militants going free after Abbas repeatedly voiced readiness to release them in recent weeks.
"This operation was ordered by the prime minister in the fight against terrorism. We are committed to the murderers of minister Rehavam Zeevi remaining behind bars," he told public radio.
The operation drew a furious response from Hamas's prime minister designate Ismail Haniya who slammed the "dangerous escalation" and warned Israel against any attempt on the life of Saadat and his comrades.
"This operation led to regrettable clashes and we hope it will not continue so that we may control the situation," Abbas said during a visit to Vienna.
The withdrawal of the three British monitors, part of a team that normally also includes Americans, drew angry accusations of collusion from the Palestinians.
But a spokeswoman for the British consulate in east Jerusalem denied charges of collusion, insisting the decision had been taken solely for the monitors' safety and had been communicated to Israel and the Palestinians on March 8.
However the explanation failed to prevent angry protests against British and US targets across the Palestinian territories.
In the Gaza Strip, hundreds of armed Palestinians stormed the British cultural centre and set fire to it while gunmen barged into a American office used to teach English in Gaza City.
Britain meanwhile urged all of its nationals who do not have proper security to leave the Palestinian territories.