Arab Gunmen Slay Acting Mayor in West Bank Town

Masked Palestinians shot and killed the Israeli-appointed deputy mayor of a West Bank town Saturday evening because he had defied activists’ orders to resign.

The masked assailants burst into the home of Deputy Mayor Yusuf Mohammed Milhem of Qalqiliya and shot him at least six times in the chest, Arab reports said.

An army spokesman said Milhem, 46, was rushed to an Israeli hospital, where he died of his wounds. An Israeli army spokesman said police have begun an investigation.

Milhem and his house had been attacked several times by activists demanding that he resign. In January, 1989, while he was being treated at Qalqiliya Hospital, masked men entered his room and stabbed him.

Milhem’s superior, the mayor of Qalqiliya, moved to a nearby Israeli town after he was threatened for refusing to resign. The underground leadership of the Palestinian uprising has repeatedly called on Israeli-appointed officials to leave their posts.

After the shooting, the army ordered all the people in the area into a nearby field for questioning, Palestinian sources said.

Meanwhile, a knife-wielding Arab passenger stabbed the Israeli driver of a bus and tried to force the vehicle off the road at the same site where 16 people were killed in a similar attack last June.

Other passengers grabbed the attacker and the bus remained on the road, according to news reports.

In the occupied territories, Palestinians brought business and transportation to a standstill Saturday in a general strike to mark the beginning of the 22nd month of the uprising against Israeli occupation. The army said Nablus, the West Bank’s largest town, was under curfew for the eighth consecutive day as troops and security agents searched for uprising activists.

An off-duty Israeli police dog handler was burned badly when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at his car, police said.

Reuven Perlmutter, 28, who was driving alone, received burns over 25% of his body and was in serious but stable condition in an Israeli hospital.

Israel Radio said four suspects had been detained.