Israel Kills 10 Palestinians

Five Palestinians, including at least one fighter and two children, were killed Saturday afternoon when an Israeli attack helicopter fired missiles at a car in the West Bank town of Tubas, witnesses and officials on both sides said.

Separately, a Palestinian gunman attacked a Jewish settlement Saturday, wounding a couple before he was shot dead. And this morning, Israeli troops said they shot and killed four Palestinians near the gravesite of a Jewish rabbi south of Hebron.

Also, the Israeli army on Saturday captured the top political leader in the West Bank of the radical Islamic movement Hamas.

The violence came as about a million Palestinian children attempted to reach classrooms on the first day of the new school year. Many had to wait for hours at Israeli military checkpoints or take back roads to evade them. In two Palestinian cities in the West Bank, Jenin and Hebron, curfews kept children at home.

In Tubas, a village about 12 miles south of Jenin, witnesses said U.S.-supplied Apache helicopters from the Israeli air force launched at least four missiles at a car driving through a residential neighborhood. The Israeli military said several men wanted for planning terrorist attacks were in the car.

One suspect was killed but others escaped, the army and Palestinian security officials said.

Raid Juma, a paramedic at the scene, said by telephone that three occupants of the car were burned to death. They included a man identified by officials as Rafah Daraghmeh, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia affiliated with the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

The other two dead from the car were 18-year-olds believed also to be members of Al Aqsa, Juma said. Several other militants riding in a second car escaped unharmed.

But one missile slammed into a nearby home, where collapsing walls crushed to death two children: Usama Daraghmeh, 12, and his 8-year-old sister, Behira. A 12-year-old cousin was critically wounded, according to Dr. Mohammed abu Ghali of Jenin Hospital, where the child and several other people seriously hurt in the attack were taken.

The army said in a statement that it regretted any loss of civilian life and that the airstrikes were carried out “within the framework of [the army’s] fight against terror.” Israel’s controversial policy of hunting and killing suspects has resulted in dozens of deaths, including those of a handful of passersby.

After nightfall Saturday, a gunman purportedly from the Balata refugee camp in nearby Nablus infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha, just to the south, and opened fire on settlers outside a vacant religious school. The man seriously wounded a 23-year-old pregnant Israeli and her husband before he was shot dead by security forces, the army said.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small faction allied with Fatah, reportedly claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Near the Palestinian village of Bani Naim, south of Hebron, soldiers killed a group of four Palestinians and said they found a saw and wire-cutting equipment on the bodies, indicating that the group was planning to infiltrate a Jewish settlement in the area.

Israeli forces Saturday also captured the senior Hamas political figure in the West Bank, Sheik Hassan Yousef, who was taken from his hide-out in the city of Ramallah. Israel accuses him of inciting Palestinians to attack Israelis, but Hamas said Yousef is just a politician, and vowed revenge.

Israel has arrested thousands of Palestinians since reoccupying the West Bank this year in the wake of a spate of suicide bombings. Among those taken into custody have been top political leaders and militiamen, including the senior Fatah official for the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, who went on public trial two weeks ago.

A relative lull in the violence in the last several weeks has convinced some Israelis that their tactics, including punishing closures, are working. But others believe that groups such as Hamas are just biding their time.

Both Hamas and Al Aqsa were vowing revenge Saturday night, and a senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat, accused Israel of undermining “all efforts aimed at reviving the hope for peace.”