4 Killed During Attack at Jewish Settlement

Three Israelis, including a woman and her daughter, were killed when a Palestinian gunman invaded a home in a Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley on Wednesday night.

The attack began as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon left Israel for Washington, where he is scheduled to meet President Bush at the White House today to press him to sever ties with the Palestinian Authority. It came on a day of mounting tension, with Israeli security forces uncovering a cache of missiles in the West Bank, thwarting a suicide attack on a Jerusalem bus and shooting dead a 16-year-old Palestinian in the Gaza Strip.

At midnight Wednesday, Israeli gunships retaliated with missile strikes on the West Bank city of Nablus, reportedly hitting the Palestinian Authority headquarters there and injuring 11 people.

The day’s deadliest attack began about 8 p.m., when a man with an M-16 rifle infiltrated the greenhouses of Moshav Hamra, a farming community of 35 families at the north end of the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.

The Israeli army said he shot a soldier before storming into a home and killing a mother and daughter. He was then shot dead.

According to media reports, the gunman wore an Israeli army uniform and carried eight ammunition clips and grenades. The victims were identified as Miriam Ohana, 50, her 11-year-old daughter Yael and reserve soldier Moshe Mekonen Megos. Ohana opened the door for her killer, apparently believing that he was an Israeli soldier, Israeli radio reported.

Palestinian militants consider Jewish settlements legitimate military targets, arguing that they are built on land claimed by the Palestinians. The Israeli government says the settlers are civilians and should not come under fire.

Aides traveling with Sharon, who landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington shortly after 10 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, blamed the Palestinian Authority and vowed that there would be a swift response.

Both the radical Islamic group Hamas and a military wing of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack.

During the shooting, nearby residents cowered in their homes. They were told to remain locked inside this morning while the army continued to search for any accomplices.

“People are inside their houses, they don’t know what is happening, but they hear bombs outside,” Orit Arzieli, a spokeswoman for the Jordan Valley Regional Council, said in an interview as the incident unfolded. Soldiers combed Hamra’s grounds for hours, firing flares as they searched for possible accomplices.

Jordan Valley settlers have complained for months that a combination of economic problems in their agricultural communities and Palestinian shooting attacks on the valley’s main north-south road is driving Israelis out of the contested area.

Earlier Wednesday, the army said it had seized eight missiles and a launcher in the West Bank--the first time such missiles had been found there. The militant Islamic movement Hamas has fired similar missiles in the Gaza Strip. The missiles, which have a range of about eight miles, could hit cities in the heart of Israel from the West Bank.

The army said it found the weapons hidden under a load of vegetables on a Palestinian truck that was traveling from Nablus to the town of Jenin. Both communities are Palestinian-ruled and intensely active in the fight against Israeli occupation that has raged since September 2000.

The missiles were intended to “threaten Israeli cities,” Israeli Brig. Gen. Gershon Yitzhak told reporters.

Arafat has called for armed extremists to halt attacks on Israelis and has told the Bush administration that he has been arresting militants and closing makeshift arms factories in the Palestinian territories.

But Palestinians continued to strike inside Israel on Wednesday. In the early afternoon, a man boarded a bus in Jerusalem bound for the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and sat down next to driver Zion Shoval.

“His coat was open, and I could see all the wires--I was already suspicious, but when I saw his hand constantly pulling at something in his pocket, I yelled to a man near me, ‘Grab his hand!’ ” Shoval told Israel Television.

Shoval stopped the bus, and police arrested the man.

Also Wednesday, a Palestinian teenager was shot to death by Israeli troops during clashes in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said.