JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The killing of a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip and a gun battle near Jerusalem Wednesday underscored the challenges the United States faces in trying to get Israel and the Palestinians to end 14 months of fighting. (Read photo caption below)
Palestinian hospital officials in the Gaza Strip said they received the body of a man who was killed by Israeli occupation soldiers near the Netzarim Jewish settlement late on Wednesday.
The occupation army said its soldiers patrolling a Gaza Strip road fired at a man who ran toward them shouting ``God is greatest'' in Arabic and ignoring calls and warning shots to stop.
The exact circumstances of the man's death could not be verified. Palestinian Public Security Chief Major-General Abdel-Razek al-Majaydeh called it an ``ugly crime'' and accused Israeli occupation soldiers of letting the wounded man bleed to death.
On the outskirts of Jerusalem, meanwhile, Palestinian Resistance men in the West Bank town of Beit Jala shot at the Jewish settlement of Gilo on Wednesday night, drawing heavy return fire from Israeli occupation forces.
There were no reports of casualties in the battle, which raged for several hours.
But it boded ill for U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni's mission, already marred by a shooting in the Israeli city of Afula on Tuesday by two Palestinian gunmen, one of them affiliated to President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.
Israel regards Gilo as a neighborhood of Jerusalem, its self-declared capital. When Gilo has come under fire in the past, Israel has responded by sending occupation forces into Beit Jala.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat(R) meets U.S. envoy to the Middle East Anthony Zinni in the West Bank City of Ramallah November 28, 2001. Zinni told Israel and the Palestinians at the end of his first round of Middle East talks that their people had suffered enough and it was time to end 14 months of fighting. (Osama Silwadi/Reuters)