Mideast still tense after assassination
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The Israeli army withdrew from the town of Beit Jala Aug. 30, saying the Palestinian leadership had promised to stop gunmen firing from the West Bank town at an Israeli settlement on the edge of Jerusalem.
Israel began the incursion Aug. 28 in response to heavy Palestinian gunfire on Gilo, a Jewish settlement Israel regards as a neighborhood of Jerusalem.
The Palestinian gunfire was in response to the Aug. 27 assassination of the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Abu Ali Mustafa. The Marxist PFLP is the second largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PFLP has claimed responsibility for several recent bombings in which no one died.
Abu Ali Mustafa was killed when two Israeli rockets smashed through the windows of his office in an apartment block. The precision strike, which Palestinians said was carried out by U.S.-made Apache helicopters, was the highest-level assassination in 11 months of escalating violence.
The assassination and the incursion drew criticism of Israel. The United States demanded that Israel leave Beit Jala, a town it handed over to Palestinian rule in 1995 under interim peace accords.
イスラエル、PLO幹部を暗殺
PLO要人が月日、イスラエル軍のミサイル攻撃により殺害された。報復としてパレスチナ側がユダヤ人入植地を銃撃。再報復のためイスラエル軍がパレスチナ統治下の町を侵攻。同軍は日、撤退したが…。
Shukan ST: Sept. 7, 2001
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