A Palestinian police officer fell martyr while defending the Palestinian village of Samoa near Hebron, the site of an Israeli massacre in 1957.
Reports said a lieutenant, who was not identified, was killed as the Israeli troops were trying to enter the PA-controlled area, while two other officers were injured in the attack.
According to the Israeli army, soldiers at a roadblock adjacent to the Palestinian village identified a group of armed Palestinians and shot at one of them wearing civilian clothing.
Palestinian security forces were also involved in an exchange of fire with Israeli Border Policemen near Abu Ghneim Mount, known the Israelis as Har Homa, in the southern Jerusalem area, said The Jerusalem Post.
There are no reports of Israeli wounded, said the paper, quoting Israel Radio.
Earlier, A Palestinian baby girl was killed Monday in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip as Israeli tanks shelled the area “in response" to the firing of mortars on a Jewish settlement.
15 others were also inured in the Israeli raid, said Reuters.
"Shrapnel went into her abdomen and came out of her back," a doctor at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis told Reuters by telephone.
Hospital officials identified her as Inam Hejjo and said she was between four and six months old.
"The baby was killed in her house during the Israeli shelling of Khan Younis refugee camp," said Dr Muhammed Salama, director-general of the emergency medicine department in the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza City.
The Israeli army said “in response to mortar bomb fire on the Neve Dekalim settlement, the Israeli army fired light weapons at Khan Younis."
PLO Fateh movement has announced an emergency meeting Monday night in the Gaza Strip in the wake of the death of Inam.
According to a senior Fateh source, quoted by the Post, "Fateh will study new ways to respond to the Israeli escalation."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reported to have apologized for the baby’s death.
Also in the Israeli camp, a major news conference was due the same evening to foreign and local journalists in Haifa.
Navy Adm. Yedidya Ya'ari and the head of military intelligence assessment Brig.-Gen. Amos Gilad were to address the meeting in the port city.
Earlier in the evening, Israel’s Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer issued an urgent warning regarding what he said is an imminent escalation of violence in the territories.
Ben-Eliezer warned that the Palestinians may very shortly move well beyond the use of mortars in their attacks on Israeli targets, said the paper.
"My evaluation is that in the coming days, maybe even in the coming hours, we will find ourselves in a reality that will simply be hard to believe," Ben-Eliezer said. "I think that we will shortly going to move beyond mortar attacks."
The defense minister warned that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is bringing the region closer and closer to total chaos -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
