Israelis Kill 4 Members of Palestinian Terrorist Gang

Israeli soldiers and security policemen killed four members of a Palestinian terrorist gang and wounded a fifth in a shootout in the hills south of Hebron, on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the army announced Monday.

The gang, which was trapped Sunday night after a hunt lasting more than a year, was responsible for killing five Israelis, including a young couple shot to death last week six miles southwest of Jerusalem, the army said.

The gang, active since May, 1984, had also wounded 18 people, including Jews and Arabs, in at least four attacks on buses traveling between Jerusalem and Hebron, the army said.

Two other Palestinians, said to be members of the gang, were captured earlier and charged with murder in the slaying of another Israeli couple last June 27 near Bet Shemesh.

Brig. Gen. Amnon Shahak, the Central Army commander, whose responsibility includes the West Bank, said in an interview on Israel radio:

“We have been making a great effort for a long time in searching for this band. The area where they operated has hundreds of caves and hiding places, and they could keep going for a long time. We know these places, too, and in the end, in one of those places, we trapped them.”

The army said that an unspecified number of other local residents were arrested for giving support to the terrorist gang.

Israel radio reported that the gang was “believed to have received money and their orders from PLO officials in Jordan,” but the official army announcement made no mention of any connection with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israeli officials have previously blamed a recent surge of West Bank terrorism on the opening of new PLO offices in Amman, the capital of Jordan. So far, however, the officials have produced no evidence that this is so.

Last week, Israeli planes attacked PLO headquarters in Tunis in retaliation for the Sept. 25 slayings of three Israelis in Larnaca, Cyprus, by pro-Palestinian terrorists.

Officials made few details available about Sunday’s shootout south of Hebron or about the members of the Palestinian gang. But informed Israeli and Palestinian sources said that the gang leader, slain in the clash, was Mohammed Hassan Ghneimat, 23, from the West Bank village of Surif, about nine miles northwest of Hebron.

Ghneimat reportedly escaped early last year from a Hebron jail where he was being held in connection with the slaying of a man from his village.

Two Earlier Captures

He was reportedly identified as the head of the gang after the capture of two others in connection with the Bet Shemesh slayings in June. Ghneimat and the rest of the gang were said to have gone underground after the arrests, living in caves until they were trapped Sunday near the village of Yattir.

The sources said that the gang was armed with at least three assault rifles and two handguns, all stolen.

Also killed in the clash was Mahmoud Mustafa Ghneimat, 30, and Ahmed Ali Bardaiye, 30, both of Surif, and Ali Khawandah Khalaileh, 25, from Samu, according to preliminary information available here.

The wounded gang member was identified as Ahmed Abdel Khamid Zub, 25, from Jaba, north of Jerusalem.

None of the Israelis involved in the shootout was injured, the army said.

It said that the gang was also responsible for the March 30, 1985, death of an Israeli settler near the marketplace in the West Bank town of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem.

May, 1984, Incident

The first terrorist attack the gang was reported to have been involved in was a shooting incident, on May, 1984, in which an Israeli hiker was wounded.

Gen. Shahak said, “The whole area in which this band operated is now clear, and I hope it will stay clear for a long, long time.”

Nevertheless, he said, Israelis traveling in the Hebron hills should carry weapons and travel in groups.

Since the first of this year, 16 Israelis have been killed in and near the West Bank area, 11 of them since June. The killings have caused widespread anger and alarm, and Monday’s announcement was welcomed, particularly by Israelis who live in the area or go there often.

“Of course people are happy,” Yigal Klein, a Jewish settler who lives in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, said in a television interview. “There’s a feeling of relief.”