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CNN Saturday Morning News

Israeli Settlement Attacked in Hebron

Aired April 27, 2002 - 07:05   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, let's get back to the crisis in the Middle East now. It's another deadly day in the West Bank. Israeli settlers have been gunned down in their homes, and a hunt is under way for the attackers.

Our Jerrold Kessel joins us now from Jerusalem with the latest.

Good to see you, Jerrold.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kyra.

And, you know, this morning just a short while ago, one Israeli cabinet minister was saying the war against terrorism isn't over. And he wasn't explicit on what he meant, but really, from the events of the last 24 hours, it seems as if he means both the -- in offensive and defensive terms.

And that was reflected over the last 24 hours. What we've had this morning is an attack on an Israeli Jewish settlement in the West Bank, to the west of the town of Hebron, where one or possibly two Palestinian gunmen penetrated the defenses of that Jewish settlement. Many of the people were at synagogue. This is the Jewish Sabbath.

And -- but the gunmen went into several of the houses, shooting as they went, wounding and killing a number of people in several of the homes in that Jewish settlement. Among the four people killed, we understand, is one young girl. There've also been three others, they're not yet identified. And seven people wounded, among them a mother and her two young children.

They were all in their homes when the gunmen went from home to home, shooting in, and then making their way onward. And by the time the army reinforcements arrived on the scene, apparently the gunmen had made good their getaway, because they could not be traced. A search is continuing in the area. It's believed they have made their way back into Palestinian-controlled Hebron, which is just about six to seven miles away from this Jewish settlement in the southern part of the West Bank.

So a deadly day indeed this morning. It comes just as Israel had been scaling down its forces over the last several days and weeks in -- after the end of its three and a half week offensive into the main Palestinian towns. Now, Hebron, just near the settlement, was not one of those towns. In fact, the only big Palestinian town which was not really targeted in the Israeli, big Israel military sweep.

There have, however, been a variety of Israeli actions over the last several days in and around Hebron, search for gunmen, for terror cells, as the Israelis put it, and various clashes in the area, but no major fighting in that particular area.

But up further north in the West Bank over the last 24 hours, Israeli forces had gone in and made a substantive raid into the town of Qalqilya, where they killed at least two people, arrested some 20 or more. And they say they thwarted a major terror strike from that West Bank town from which they had withdrawn a couple of weeks ago right on the Israel-West Bank border. They had withdrawn from there, and they thwarted, they say, a major terror strike.

And in the wake of that, despite President Bush saying yesterday after his meeting with the Saudi crown prince that Israel must really wrap up its military activities in Palestinian areas, the Israeli military and the defense chief say that they will have to continue their initiated offensive operations against terror wherever it's deemed necessary.

So operations in that way from the Israelis offensively and this way in the sense defensively, but this time suffering a deadly attack from Palestinian gunmen, four settlers killed, seven wounded -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Jerrold Kessel, live in Jerusalem, thank you.

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