Fighting Rages in West Bank Despite Talks

Israeli troops fired grenade launchers and machine guns Friday to repel Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank, close to where top security officials from both sides had met just hours earlier to try to reduce the violence.

Seven Palestinians, including two police officers, were wounded in the battle on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah. Two buildings were damaged.

In the Gaza Strip, nine Palestinians were injured, one critically, when Israeli soldiers fired at youths throwing stones at an Israeli post near the Karni crossing, doctors said. Two Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire elsewhere in Gaza.

The violence persisted although Israeli and Palestinian field commanders in Ramallah and Gaza had held talks Friday morning. Cooperation between security forces, a pillar of interim peace deals, was being resumed, a senior Palestinian official said.

But an Israeli official was pessimistic that anything would come out of the meetings.

“No one can say that they will be useful, but we have to try,” said Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror.

Joint security patrols will not be renewed as long as shooting continues, Dror said.

The fighting in Ramallah began when Palestinian gunmen fired from a demonstration of about 2,000 people at Israeli troops. Two Palestinian security officials and five other people were wounded when the soldiers returned fire.

As the confrontation escalated, Israel fired seven rockets at an office building housing the Palestinian Statistics Bureau, blowing large holes in the walls, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said. Missiles also damaged the headquarters of Arafat’s Fatah movement in Al Birah, a town next to Ramallah, witnesses said.

The Israeli army denied that any missiles or shells were fired in the area, saying that soldiers lobbed grenades and used heavy machine-gun fire.

In Gaza, a bomb exploded near a Jewish settlement, wounding an Israeli civilian and a soldier, the army said.