Israeli gunman kills 3 Palestinians in West Bank-medics

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli gunman killed three
Palestinians in the West Bank on Wednesday, Israeli medical
officials said, in an attack that could complicate Israel’s
evacuation of Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip.

A police spokesman said the attacker, identified in the
Israeli media as a Jewish settler from the West Bank, was
arrested.

Medical officials said three Palestinians were killed and
at least three others were wounded in the shooting near the
Jewish settlement of Shiloh.

“It appears that an Israeli who resides locally grabbed a
gun from a security man at the Shiloh industrial zone and
opened fire on Palestinians, who may have been workers or
passers-by,” an Israeli security source said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the
attack, which was likely to raise tensions at a time when
Israel hopes Palestinian militants will hold their fire as it
evacuates all of Gaza’s 8,500 settlers.

Hours before the incident, Israeli troops began removing
settlers and their supporters from several Gaza settlements as
part of a pullout which Israeli opponents see as capitulation
to a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000.

The West Bank attack came nearly two weeks after an
ultranationalist Jew opposed to the Gaza pullout shot dead four
Israeli Arabs on a bus in northern Israel.

Violence has dropped steeply in the occupied Gaza Strip and
the West Bank since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a ceasefire in
February.