Palestinians Kill 12 in Ambush

Palestinian assailants ambushed Jewish settlers walking from Sabbath prayers accompanied by army guards Friday night in the West Bank city of Hebron, killing at least 12 Israelis and wounding more than 15 others in a hail of grenades and automatic-weapons fire, the Israeli military and witnesses said.

The attack, in a city that has long been a tinderbox of religious tensions, was among the deadliest aimed at Jewish settlers during the more than 2-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The ambush was staged in a narrow thoroughfare known as Worshipers’ Way that leads from a settlement outside Hebron to an ancient and much-disputed shrine inside the Palestinian city.

The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the ambush. The army identified the dead as four soldiers, five paramilitary border policemen and three settlers.

Islamic Jihad had vowed vengeance after the killing last Saturday of the group’s military leader in the northern West Bank, in a confrontation with Israeli troops.

After Friday night’s attack in Hebron, Israeli troops launched a manhunt, firing flares skyward, sending armored vehicles into the streets and storming several houses, according to Israeli television. Helicopters circled as townspeople fled the onslaught, and witnesses said two Palestinians were killed. It was not known if they were involved in the attack.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held late-night telephone consultations with his defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, and a sharp military response was widely anticipated.

But Israeli commanders have acknowledged that the army is running out of targets; Israeli troops already occupy or encircle most of the West Bank’s major cities and towns, where they have arrested dozens of militants in recent days.

Israel is in the midst of a heated political contest, with general elections scheduled Jan. 28, and the attack could put pressure on Sharon to expel Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Sharon’s challenger for the leadership of his conservative Likud Party, new Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has urged Arafat’s expulsion.

Hebron is a volatile city, and incidents such as this one -- on holy days or at sensitive sites, or both -- tend to inflame passions on both sides.

Palestinians are observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and have bitterly protested the Israeli military incursions that have taken place in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since it began.

Friday’s attack, described by officials as having the hallmarks of a carefully plotted ambush, took place around 7:30 p.m., when Jewish worshipers from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, just outside Hebron, customarily walk to and from Sabbath prayers at the stone-domed Tomb of the Patriarchs. The site is held sacred by Jews and Muslims alike as the burial place of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The gunmen were believed to have taken up positions on a hilltop known as Abu Sneineh, which overlooks the route used by the settlers. Soldiers and medics who rushed to help the group came under fire themselves from snipers in other, higher positions.

A fierce exchange of gunfire ensued and lasted at least an hour, according to witnesses, pinning down the wounded and their would-be rescuers.

Hebron, where about 450 Jewish settlers live among about 120,000 Palestinians, is a city rich in biblical associations, but it also has a blood-soaked recent past. The city, 25 miles south of Jerusalem, is the only one in the West Bank where settlers and Palestinians live in such close proximity.

Hebron settlers are considered among the most militant in the West Bank. The settlers clash frequently with not only their Palestinian neighbors but with Israeli soldiers deployed to defend them.

In 1929, Arab riots broke out in Hebron, and dozens of the city’s Jews were massacred. Today, almost every street and square in the Jewish areas is named for Jews killed in the riots. Jews began moving back into the old Jewish quarter after Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War.

In 1994, a U.S.-born doctor from Kiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, stormed into the Tomb of the Patriarchs and sprayed worshipers with gunfire, killing 29 Palestinians and injuring more than 150 others before being overpowered and killed.

Friday’s claim of responsibility by Islamic Jihad, issued by the group’s Syria-based leader, was carried on the Qatar-based satellite station Al Jazeera. A spokesman for the group in the Palestinian territories, Mohammed al Hindi, didn’t repeat the claim but told reporters, “Our jihad will continue until victory or martyrdom.”

Arafat’s Palestinian Authority normally has control over most of Hebron, but Israeli troops patrol in and around Jewish areas in the city center, as well as the settlements on Hebron’s outskirts, imposing tight curfews on thousands of Palestinian residents during times of unrest.

In recent weeks, Israeli troops had pulled back from most of the Palestinian-controlled parts of the city, and the town had been largely quiet.

Israeli officials swiftly denounced the attack, which was the deadliest against Jewish settlers since 11 people were killed in an attack on a bus outside a West Bank settlement in December 2001.

Hours after the attack, the army blew up a metal workshop in Gaza City where Israelis say weapons were made. It was the third such strike in the same area this week.

The Foreign Ministry called the Hebron attack a “Sabbath massacre,” adding in a statement, “No political process can take root while these atrocities continue to be carried out by Palestinian terrorists.”