U.N. Worker, Arabs Tell of Camp Beatings

Israeli police under army command beat more than 60 Palestinians in a West Bank refugee camp overnight, Arabs and a U.N. relief worker reported today.

At the Shufat camp, residents and a U.N. field worker said Israeli border police dragged people from their beds and beat them with wooden truncheons. Border police are under army command when serving in the occupied territories.

Mohammed Nima, 15, said hundreds of men and boys were rounded up in a three-hour period beginning at 10 p.m. Thursday and forced to lie face down in a garbage dump.

Jamal Awad, a field worker for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, said 64 Palestinians suffered injuries and were taken to Mukassad hospital in Arab East Jerusalem, where most were treated and released. His agency manages the refugee camps.

Khalil Qawasmi said he was awakened at 10 p.m. Thursday by police shouting through megaphones for men between the ages of 15 and 45 to come out of their homes.

“As soon as I got out the door, they fell upon me, more than 10, kicking and beating me with wooden truncheons,” said Qawasmi, 27, who had an injured knee, bandaged head and swollen black eye.

Awoke in Hospital

“I fainted and when I woke up I found myself in (Mukassad) hospital,” Qawasmi said. He said he was treated and released.

At Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock mosque, among the most sacred shrines of Islam, chanting worshipers marched after Friday prayers and Israeli police arrested six who raised the outlawed Palestinian flag.

Soldiers confronted stone-throwing Arabs in scattered protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel radio said today Secretary of State George P. Shultz telephoned Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to protest the alleged beating of three Americans by Israeli soldiers. An aide to Shamir denied the report and U.S. Embassy officials refused comment.