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Israel kills Islamic Jihad militant in shootout

Posted on: Sunday, 30 October 2005, 13:15 CST

By Wael al-Ahmed

JENIN, West Bank, Oct 30 - Israeli troops killed an Islamic Jihad militant in a shootout in the West Bank on Sunday, hours after the faction agreed to halt rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said.

A week of violence has badly damaged a nearly nine-month-old truce and hopes that Israel's withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip in September could energize peacemaking in the Middle East.

A gunbattle erupted at sunset when Israeli troops surrounded the hideout of an Islamic Jihad militant in Qabatiya, the West Bank home town of the Jihad suicide bomber who killed five Israelis in a market place on Wednesday.

Palestinian security sources said one gunman had been shot dead. Militants battled troops nearby and Israeli helicopters sent down bursts of gunfire.

The fighting in the West Bank followed a day of unusual quiet around the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian officials said Islamic Jihad had agreed to halt cross-border rocket attacks as long as there were no Israeli raids. Israel had decided to stop air raids launched in response to the rockets, they said.

Airstrikes killed nine Palestinians, most of them militants, since Thursday.

Khaled al-Batsh, a leader for Islamic Jihad in Gaza said, "if the enemy stops its attacks, our commitment to calm will be maintained." There was no immediate word on whether this position had changed after the West Bank violence.

FIGHTING

Israeli officials said that if rocket fire from Gaza stopped then raids there would stop too, but that operations against Islamic Jihad would continue following the suicide bombing in the city of Hadera.

"There is an intent to continue it until they cannot carry out any more suicide bombings," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the cabinet.

Islamic Jihad began the latest round of rocket fire from Gaza and carried out the suicide attack following Israel's killing of one of its top commanders in the West Bank a week ago.

Islamic Jihad, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, did not say that it would halt suicide bombings as part of a renewed commitment to the truce.

The United States had appealed to Israel for caution in its assaults on militants, while also urging Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to take action to rein in the armed groups waging an uprising since 2000.

Palestinians are meant to start disarming the factions under a U.S.-backed "road map," but Abbas has said that to use force could risk civil war. Israel has not met its own road map commitment to freeze West Bank settlement building.

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Youssef said on Saturday his forces would confiscate guns on the streets and "deal firmly" with workshops making weapons or explosives. There was no immediate sign of action.

Source: REUTERS

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