Six Palestinians die in West Bank clash
Israelis protest Sharon plan with miles-long human chain
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Six Palestinians died in a clash Sunday with Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Israeli military sources and Palestinian medical and security officials said.
Palestinian security officials said two of the men were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. They identified one of the dead as Hani Oweida, an Al Aqsa leader in Tulkarem.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the Israeli attack.
Palestinian sources said undercover Israeli units in Tulkarem appeared to have targeted two Al Aqsa militants and killed them. Four passers-by were also killed and several others were wounded, they said.
The Israeli military sources said the six who died were all armed.
Elsewhere Sunday, tens of thousands of Israeli settlers demonstrated against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza by holding hands in a human chain that stretched about 90 kilometers (55 miles) from Gaza to Jerusalem. Israeli news media said 130,000 demonstrators were on hand. (Full story)
Earlier in the day in Gaza, Israeli emergency services and military officials said Palestinian militants fired what was apparently an antitank missile from Khan Yunis into a community center at the Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim, wounding six Israeli children, one of them moderately.
Israeli helicopters launched missiles twice Sunday against a house in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood, Palestinian sources said.
In the first attack Sunday morning, a single missile wounded three bystanders, Palestinian security and medical sources said.
Video showed a boy being treated for a minor wound on his arm. Palestinian medical sources said two others suffered minor wounds, and the video showed a damaged building.
The Israeli military said its target was "a weapons workshop located in a residential building ... used by the Hamas terrorist organization and likely by other terrorist organizations to produce and develop a variety of weapons, notably Qassam rockets."
The Qassam is a homemade rocket that militants have deployed in the Palestinian territories and used against Israel.
A couple in a second-floor apartment that shared a wall with the missile's target used a rope to lower their children from their window to a crowd standing in the rubble below. The man and the woman then left the apartment by climbing down a ladder.
Residents put out fires on the first floor as bystanders surrounded the area and medics treated the wounded.
In the second attack Sunday night, a helicopter fired two missiles at the building, the Palestinian sources said, but no casualties were reported. The Israeli army had no comment.
The strikes came three days after a similar strike in the area killed two Islamic Jihad militants.
Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization. Its military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, has admitted responsibility for terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians as well as attacks against the Israeli military.
Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants have attacked military and civilian targets in Israel, and in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Islamic Jihad is a militant group dedicated to the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. It operates from Gaza and has carried out military operations against Israeli soldiers and civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
Israel and the United States consider all three terrorist organizations.
