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Israeli gunman kills 3 Palestinians in West Bank-medics

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 August 2005, 09:47 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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