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CNN Sunday Morning
Sharon Returns Home to Difficult Situation
Aired February 10, 2002 - 10:01 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get more now on that shooting incident in the Middle East. With details we turn to CNN's Jerrold Kessel who is in Jerusalem. Jerrold, what is the latest?
JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello Miles. Just in the last few minutes Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned home. His plane landing at Vingurean Airport (ph) outside Tel Aviv, back from his talks with the president at the White House at the end of last week, and Mr. Sharon coming back again to another difficult situation as there has been, as you say, more violence and more attacks -- attack in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba.
It was just lunchtime break for many soldiers at a major Israeli command post there in the southern desert town when two Palestinian gunmen raced up in their car, jumped out, began spraying the area with an automatic weapons. Two Israeli women were killed. Five other Israelis were wounded, one reported in critical condition. Before, within a minute, this all took just a minute. Other Israeli soldiers, we're told that it was an Army major who happened to be passing by, reacted very quickly with his pistol, shot the two Palestinian gunmen dead. So leaving two Israelis dead, the two gunmen dead, and really the surprise for Israelis, not so much that there was another attack, but the location.
There have been, of course, several such shooting attacks and suicide bombings in the heart of Israeli towns, but this in a rather remote desert town of Beersheba, which is relatively an Israeli (UNINTELLIGIBLE) some 20 or 15 or 20 miles away from both Gaza and the West Bank, and there haven't been any such incident in the year and a half of bloody confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians in that southern Israeli town -- but now the violence reaching there too.
In -- earlier another Israeli woman had died, a 79-year old overnight in the West Bank when, as she was driving back to her settlement home with her son, they were ambushed by Palestinian gunmen on the West Bank. She was killed, her son was injured, and in the wake of that incident, in the wake indeed of a number of attacks on Israelis in the West Bank in recent days, Israeli troops (UNINTELLIGIBLE) into the outskirts, the fringes of the major Palestinian town of Nablus, conducting what the Israeli Army said was house-to-house searches for militants. They arrested three people, but that encouraged by the Israeli Army triggered quite a fierce gun battle with the Palestinian gunmen and six Palestinians who were reported wounded in those exchanges too, are said to be in critical condition -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Jerrold, any reports of reprisals, perhaps from the Palestinians? There are some points of, perhaps, missile firings out of Gaza?
KESSEL: I don't know of a better reprisal, but certainly a missile, and this could be a significant development, and may potentially a very volatile one. Just about the time of that Beersheba attack earlier in the day here, a missile or believed to be a missile, something landed in southern Israel in the fields of one of the communal farms near Gaza and the Israeli Army investigating whether this was a missile fired and one which is a homegrown -- a home developed missile by the radical Islamic group Hamas.
They've -- they say they are developing such a missile and the Israelis, why this is significant, there was no damage and no injuries caused, but the Israelis have warned very, very emphatically Prime Minister Sharon has said if those missiles that the Palestinians are drawing up with a range of up to 10 kilometers potentially -- that's about six miles, and if they are launched into Israeli cities against the Israeli civilian population from either Gaza or the West Bank, well that, says Mr. Sharon, would mean that this confrontation was being escalated not simply onto another plain, but into a whole different realm. And Israel, he says ominously, would respond accordingly.
So the Army still checking whether there is one of those Kasam (ph) missiles as they're being dubbed, or not, whether it's a mortar, and if it is a missile, although it didn't cause damage, this could be a very volatile development indeed -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Something to watch for sure. Jerrold Kessel in Jerusalem. Thank you very much.
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