Gun Attack Kills 5 Israelis at Kibbutz

At least one suspected Palestinian gunman infiltrated a remote Israeli kibbutz just across the border from the West Bank late Sunday, killing at least five people, wounding three others and setting off a massive nighttime manhunt by Israeli troops using search dogs and helicopters, witnesses and officials said.

Flares lighted the sky as hundreds of police and soldiers scoured the low hills around Kibbutz Metzer in northern Israel, but the attacker or attackers escaped. Earlier in the day, the kibbutz was the scene of an intercepted car bombing that killed two Palestinian men when their vehicle exploded.

Israeli retaliation for the shooting was swift. Two hours after the attack on the collective farm, helicopters launched an airstrike on Gaza City before dawn today, firing rockets into the downtown area near the Mediterranean seaside.

Kibbutz Metzer lies near the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank, not far from the Palestinian town of Tulkarm, which has often served as a staging ground for attacks during more than two years of intense Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Infiltrations by Palestinian militants of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have become common during the fighting, but Sunday’s attack was one of the worst in memory against a kibbutz inside Israel proper.

The gunman, who authorities said probably had an accomplice, slipped into the community shortly after midnight and fired at a family inside their home and at residents leaving the communal dining hall after a late supper, authorities said.

Other residents, who recently held a drill on how to cope with such an attack, huddled in their homes as the gunfire rang out. A woman who identified herself only as Irit told Israeli radio that the shooting went on for about 10 minutes before security forces arrived.

The district police chief, Yaakov Borovsky, told Israeli radio that based on the number and timing of the shots fired, it was believed that there was more than one assailant.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the shooting in telephone calls to Western news agencies. However, it is not unusual for more than one militant group to claim responsibility for the same attack.

Israeli officials said they suspected that the shooting might have been the work of the same militants who had sent a fully primed car bomb across the border from the West Bank and into Israel earlier in the day. The vehicle blew up when border police tried to stop it on a road near the kibbutz.

It was not clear whether the powerful bomb was accidentally set off by the car’s two occupants or whether they deliberately triggered it when they realized they would not be able to reach their target. The blast reduced the car to a charred wreck.

The explosion was one of three foiled suicide bombings Sunday, including one attempt by a 15-year-old boy who was captured in the West Bank city of Nablus as he set off on a bombing mission, Israeli officials said.

Another case involved a senior activist from the militant group Hamas, who was arrested overnight in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron. Israeli officials said he had masterminded an imminent bomb plot.

Also Sunday, despite multiple warnings of possible attacks, the army eased its grip on the West Bank city of Jenin, lifting a tight curfew for the first full day since Oct. 25. Families flocked to markets to shop for provisions for the holy month of Ramadan, and bulldozers began clearing away debris.

The partial troop pullback came a day after the killing in Jenin of an Islamic Jihad leader blamed by Israel for some of the most deadly bombings of recent months. Iyad Sawalha, the commander of the group’s military operations in the northern West Bank, was killed Saturday in an exchange of gunfire after Israeli troops tracked him to a house on the edge of the casbah, or old city, and uncovered the hidden chamber he was holed up in.

The clampdown on Jenin came only days after a bus bombing in northern Israel that killed 14 people and that Israel said was orchestrated by Sawalha and his Islamic Jihad cell.

Today’s predawn rocket attack in Gaza City touched off a raging fire, witnesses said. They said the target appeared to be a building they described as an auto-parts shop, believed to be empty at the time.

An Israeli army spokesman said one of two air force helicopters used in the attack fired four missiles at the shop, suspected of housing an arms factory.

The kibbutz attack was the most serious strike at Israelis since a shakeup late last month in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, after the collapse of his parliamentary alliance with the Labor Party.

The restyled Cabinet includes Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who as army chief of staff oversaw the use of drastic military measures in the West Bank and Gaza in response to attacks, and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also takes a tougher stance than Sharon toward the Palestinians.