Mideast Conflict Kills 44 in Deadliest Day in 17 Months

On the deadliest day yet in 17 months of strife, Israel on Friday stormed refugee camps, took scores of prisoners and bombarded enemy positions ahead of the arrival of the United States’ special Middle East envoy.

But even as Israel escalated its ferocious assault on targets across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon slightly eased his insistence on seven days of quiet before he would agree to cease-fire talks. That condition has been a stumbling block because the Palestinians have been unable to meet it to Sharon’s satisfaction.

“Negotiations to stop the shooting will be held under fire,” Sharon told Israeli television. If true, this represents a significant shift in Israeli government policy.

The suggestion of new flexibility on Sharon’s part came on a day when at least 38 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed. Israeli officials say they have launched the offensive to crush terrorists who have killed dozens of Jews, including children, in suicide bombings and shootings.

Many of the Palestinians killed Friday were gunmen. But the dead also included a hospital administrator, a mother of five, and two boys, 9 and 12.

The massive operation Friday and early today followed the killing of five Israeli students by an Islamic militant who penetrated their settlement in Gaza. Defense Ministry officials also said Israel was making a final offensive push before U.S. special envoy Anthony C. Zinni arrives next week to press for a cease-fire.

After keeping the Middle East at arm’s length for most of his time in office, President Bush, apparently alarmed at the unprecedented level of spilled blood, reversed himself Thursday and dispatched Zinni.

Zinni, who failed to quell violence during two earlier visits, will face an even more difficult task this time. Although Israelis and Palestinians both formally said they welcomed his return, they also have an interest in sustaining military pressure and exacting more revenge.

In a violent showdown that some feared would end in a blood bath, Israeli forces who had taken over two refugee camps in the West Bank city of Tulkarm surrounded Palestinian gunmen holed up inside one of the camps Friday and demanded that they surrender.

For most of the day, the gunmen and soldiers exchanged fire sporadically. Residents said they were forced to hide in their homes as soldiers moved from building to building, cutting through walls as they went.

On bullhorns, the troops called on men between 14 and 40 to report to a central United Nations-run school, according to residents reached by telephone. There, soldiers took away their cellular phones.

One Israeli soldier was killed in the Tulkarm battle. At least seven Palestinians were killed, but there were fears of many more casualties inside the camp. As fighting raged, the Israeli army sealed off the camp and banned ambulances and humanitarian aid workers from entering, citing the dangers of ongoing shooting.

“There are a lot of soldiers going around and snipers on buildings around the camp,” said one camp resident, who gave his name as Iyad. “Nobody can move.”

Late Friday, the Israeli army reported that dozens of men had surrendered. Television footage released by the military showed scores of Palestinian men seated on the ground, their hands on their heads. Others were stripped of their shirts and marched away. Still others were handcuffed and blindfolded.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said more than 200 suspects were captured in Tulkarm, hundreds of weapons were confiscated and several bomb-making workshops were located. But Palestinians said most of those shown in the television pictures were ordinary residents and not fighters, most of whom they said had slipped away.

On Friday afternoon in Jerusalem, police shot dead a Palestinian man they said was about to detonate a bomb strapped to his body.

In Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, streets were still and shuttered Friday after a night of thunderous airstrikes and early morning gun battles that ushered tanks into positions around the Aida and Dahaisha refugee camps.

By nightfall Friday, eight Palestinians had been killed and 20 wounded in Bethlehem, hospital officials said. One was a fighter from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade killed when a tank shell hit his car, and three were policemen; a 36-year-old mother of five and a 42-year-old hospital administrator also were killed.

Ismail Hawajah, 36, a teacher, was beyond tears Friday as he sat on a low concrete ledge outside the doors of Beit Jala Government Hospital, his head bowed and relatives gathered around him. Hawajah’s wife, Huda, had been declared dead on arrival at the hospital a few hours before.

She was killed, relatives said, when Israeli troops began breaking down doors and walls of houses in the Aida camp, moving from one house to the next Friday morning in search of gunmen.

“She put the children in one room, and she and Ismail were in the other,” said her brother, who declined to give his name. “The army threw a bomb to break the door, and she was hit with shrapnel.”

Her family said she bled to death when an ambulance was delayed by an hour.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said she could not respond to the specific charge that ambulances were delayed getting into Aida but said the army must sometimes block emergency rescue vehicles when gun battles are raging. Israeli officials also charge that Palestinian ambulances are sometimes used to carry weapons and gunmen.

In the Jewish settlement of Atzmona in the southern Gaza Strip, workers Friday wiped up blood and plastered holes left by shrapnel in the walls of a religious military training academy attacked overnight by a lone Palestinian militant.

The attacker, armed with a gun and grenades, walked through an opening in an electrical fence, cut through a second wire fence and sprinted over sand dunes into the settlement.

Under cover of darkness, he hurled six grenades into dorm rooms where Israeli youths--cadets preparing for enrollment in the Israeli army’s most elite units--were sleeping, studying or praying. Then he raked the buildings with automatic gunfire, emptying nine clips. Five teenagers were killed, including Arik Krugliak, 18, who burned to death when his room caught fire.

The killer was later identified as Mohammed Farahat, 19, a member of the militant group Hamas from Gaza City. His rampage lasted about 15 minutes before one resident, an army officer named Ayal Tam, killed him.

The neighboring settlement, Bedolah, was similarly invaded and attacked by Palestinian commandos about six months ago, in an incident that triggered chagrined military admissions of a lapse in security.

The residents of Atzmona were circumspect Friday.

“To close all of the settlements so that nobody can get in is very difficult,” said Yona Emanuel, an accountant for the Atzmona community. “We know we live in a place that is not always secure. The army is caring for our security but is not always going to succeed. That’s the way it is in a war.”

Emanuel, 47, was one of the many residents who charged the shooter shortly after the attack began.

The Atzmona school is one of 14 army-prep academies that channel religious youths into the upper echelon of the Israeli military. It had about 120 students. On Friday, the students were bused from funeral to funeral for their five classmates.

The single deadliest gun battle of the day raged in the village of Khuzaa in the southern Gaza Strip, about three miles from Atzmona. Dozens of tanks and armored vehicles roared into the village from three sides about 1 a.m. Paratroops moved from street to street and took up positions in olive groves and in buildings.

Almost instantly, a Palestinian police officer and two members of his family were killed. The commander of national security forces for the southern half of Gaza, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Mefrej, rushed to the village and was killed. In fighting that followed, 12 more Palestinians were killed in Khuzaa.

At midday Friday, 16 bodies shrouded in green flags were laid, side by side, in a schoolyard in nearby Khan Yunis. Thousands attended the funerals, many men firing guns and shouting angry demands for revenge.

Four Palestinians were killed in other parts of Gaza, and another was killed near the West Bank town of Jenin.

Sharon, by announcing his willingness to negotiate a cease-fire, hopes to place the ball in Arafat’s court. But the relentless fighting has hardened both sides.

Palestinian militants have tasted success in a recent string of operations that hit the Israeli military hard.

As unlikely as it may seem, the militants are sufficiently encouraged by their gains to contemplate being able to force Israel to withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank and Gaza, much as it withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 after a relentless war of attrition waged by Islamic Hezbollah guerrillas.

Sharon is acutely aware of this and has been determined to crush the Palestinians militarily before entertaining any sort of negotiation. His public statements to that effect apparently alarmed the Bush administration and prodded it to act. After months of focusing reproach exclusively on Arafat, Washington seems likely now to pressure Sharon to restrain his troops.

Zinni’s presence could give the two sides a face-saving reason to call off military operations. But that will depend largely on whether the U.S. wants to get deeply involved.

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