Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Violence Rages On in West Bank

Aired March 13, 2002 - 14:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: From the Middle East now, violence raging there, where Israeli tanks have fired on Palestinian targets. And today, some journalists were victims as well. From Jerusalem, Mike Hanna now reports on the latest there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE HANNA, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF (on camera): Israeli forces are continuing their operation in the West Bank city of Ramallah. They have reoccupied the city now for more than a day. This part of what the Israeli military says is a stepped-up program to strike at centers of terrorism, as it puts it.

But from Palestinian sides, absolute anger at this ongoing Israeli operations, saying that being affected in the main are civilians and not the militants that Israel says the operations are directed at. Palestinians say too that the free movement of ambulances not being allowed, that the humanitarian situation within Ramallah is getting more serious by the hour.

Israeli tanks are moving through the streets of Ramallah. There have been a number of eruptions of gun fire in the course of the day as there have been since the Israeli forces moved into that particular area. Among the dead in the of course of the day, a senior Palestinian security force officer, a member of Yasser Arafat's 417 body which is his personal bodyguard. Also killed in the course of the day, an Israeli officer and a freelance photographer who was shot and killed at some stage during the course of the day, his colleagues say by Israeli tank fire.

So the situation in Ramallah remains absolutely tense as it does in other parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. All of this just before U.S. special envoy Anthony Zinni arrives in the region. His task, to implement a ceasefire on the ground, to implement a ceasefire plan that had been drawn out by CIA Director George Tenet last year, a plan that has never been implemented. Very difficult to see how Zinni is going to succeed in implementing this where two previous missions of his have failed.

Mike Hanna, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com