Israeli Soldier Slain, 2nd Injured in Gaza Ambush

Palestinian gunmen ambushed Israeli soldiers riding in a jeep, killing one and wounding another, in the first attack of its kind during the Arab uprising, Israeli army officials said Monday.

The attack took place in the Gaza Strip, which has been racked by violence as the Israeli army seeks to crush the nearly two-year-old Palestinian uprising.

The entire Gaza Strip, home to about 700,000 Arabs, was closed off to outsiders, and parts of it were put under curfew while the army looked for suspects in the shooting.

“Automatic gunfire was directed at (an Israel Defense Forces) vehicle traveling in the Sheikh Ajalin neighborhood in Gaza (City) in the evening,” an army spokesman said. “As a result of the gunfire, an IDF soldier was killed and another was wounded.”

The dead soldier was identified as Cpl. Saul Trechtenbroit. He was the fifth Israeli soldier killed while on active duty in the occupied lands during the uprising.

Two other uniformed soldiers were shot to death after being kidnaped while hitchhiking inside Israel proper. An eighth off-duty soldier was stabbed to death in Jerusalem.

Military sources said the ambush was carried out by Muslim fundamentalists of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas. Several Hamas members were arrested last week as suspects in the earlier kidnapings and slayings of the two Israeli soldiers.

The use of firearms to carry out attacks on Israeli soldiers has been rare during the uprising, with the weapons of choice commonly being knives or stones. But due to mounting Palestinian casualties, the underground leadership of the intifada , as the uprising is called by Arabs, had been warning of escalation.

More than 600 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli soldiers, while 36 Israelis have been killed.

Rumors of efforts to kill more soldiers have been sweeping the West Bank and Gaza for weeks. In the West Bank village of Al Birah, residents reported a recent gasoline bomb attack on an army convoy that wounded a high-ranking officer. The report could not be confirmed, but the town has been under curfew for the past four days, with all entrances to it sealed off by large roadblocks made of sandbags and stone.

The army clamped curfews on large parts of the West Bank today in anticipation of Wednesday’s anniversary of the Palestinian declaration of independence. Schools were ordered shut in Gaza until Saturday; in the West Bank they were ordered closed for two months.

In many towns and villages, outlawed Palestinian flags are flying from mosques and electricity lines.