Army Bars Israeli Leftists From Raided Village

The army on Saturday barred Israeli leftists carrying black flags of mourning from entering the West Bank village of Nahhalin, the site of a bloody raid by border police that killed five people.

Also Saturday, officials at Jerusalem’s Mukassed Hospital said a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israeli authorities died Thursday of stab wounds.

Arab reports identified the man as Musallam Mahmoud Shaheen, 40, and said masked youths broke into his West Bank home and attacked him because they suspected him of cooperating with Israel.

Another suspected collaborator, a 32-year-old Palestinian woman, was hospitalized with broken limbs after being beaten for at least two days by Arab militants, the army and Arab reports said.

In the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, 16 Palestinians, including six children under the age of 15, were wounded in clashes with troops, Arab hospital officials said. An army official confirmed five wounded.

Throughout the occupied lands, Palestinians observed a general strike called by the pro-PLO leaders of the uprising.

Shops were shuttered and transportation came to a halt. In Gaza, activists blocked roads with stones to enforce the strike.

Israeli legislator Yossi Sarid led a convoy of 20 cars draped with black flags to Nahhalin, but the group was stopped by troops a mile from the village. Sarid said soldiers told him the area was closed to civilians.

Can’t Block Message

“It’s possible to block our entrance, but they can’t block our message of total opposition to the massacre that happened in the village,” Sarid of the left-wing Citizens Rights Movement said.

Preliminary results of an army investigation showed that border police fired indiscriminately during their April 13 search-and-arrest raid in the village.

At Mukassed Hospital, 25-year-old Walid Mohammed Najadereh died late Friday of head wounds received in the raid, hospital officials said. His death brought the death toll in the raid to five.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah, 32-year-old Sabah Kanaan was hospitalized with multiple fractures after being held by members of a so-called Palestinian strike force, army officials and Arab reporters said.

The militants broke into Kanaan’s home in the West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday night and beat her with clubs and sticks because they believed she collaborated with Israel, said an Arab reporter, quoting neighbors.

“She was shouting, ‘I’ll stop, I’ll stop!’ ” the reporter quoted the neighbors as saying.

Israel Radio said Kanaan was held for three days.