Posted on 09/24/2004 5:24:22 AM PDT by BlackVeil
JERUSALEM (AFP) - An Israeli woman was killed in a Palestinian mortar strike on a Jewish settlement in Gaza, as Israel prepared to mark Judaism's most solemn day of Yom Kippur amid fears of suicide bombings.
"A woman was killed by a mortar shell that landed on her house in the Neve Dekalim settlement" in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli army spokesman told AFP, without giving the victim's name.
He said the mortars were fired from the nearby Palestinian town of Khan Yunis. A man was lightly injured in the same attack.
According to Israeli public radio, the victim who died in hospital of her injuries was a young girl from Jerusalem on a visit to the settlement.
The latest death raised to 4,337 the number of people killed in the four-year-old intifada, including 3,317 Palestinians and 949 Israelis, according to an AFP count.
Mortars were also fired at the Morag settlement, likewise in southern Gaza, without causing any casualties.
Palestinian security sources said that Israeli tanks fired on Khan Yunis in a swift apparent reprisal for the attacks, both of which were claimed by the radical Islamic Jihad and its larger rival Hamas in telephone calls to AFP.
The deadly attack came as Israel was still reeling from a deadly militant infiltration into Morag on Thursday that left three Israeli troops dead as well as the three Palestinian assailants.
Israeli police were placed on high alert Friday morning, less than a day after troops arrested four Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, allegedly on their way to carry out suicide attacks in the Jewish state.
The daily Haaretz said Israel's internal security services, or Shin Beth, had received no less than 40 warning of attacks for the 24-hour Yom Kippur holiday starting at sunset on Friday.
Shops were to shut down and all motorized traffic come to a complete halt until Saturday evening to observe the Day of Atonement -- a period of fasting, reflection and prayers on the holy day in the Jewish calendar.
Security guards and several thousand police, backed up by volunteers, were deployed in and around cities, especially market places where last-minute shoppers prepared for the holiday.
Additional forces were posted at synagogues and cemeteries, where thousands were expected to pay homage to their fellow-citizens who fell in the 1973 Israeli-Arab war, known as the Yom Kippur war.
Checkpoints were also set up next to the West Bank to prevent infiltrations by would-be Palestinian attackers.
The West Bank and Gaza were placed under a watertight closure on the eve of the Jewish new year a week ago. Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco said it would last until after the Feast of the Tabernacle, Sukkot in Hebrew, on October 8.
Also on Friday, the army said it arrested 13 wanted Palestinian militants in the West Bank overnight.
In the Gaza Strip, medics said that a young Palestinian wounded by Israeli army gunfire earlier this week in Rafah, in southern Gaza, had died of his injuries during the night.
JL, it looks as if you might have been right, about those overconfident headlines. Three Israeli soldiers killed yesterday in Gaza, too.
WAS ANYBODY Watching FOX yesterday, the folks that come out to these bombing sites lifted up a whole leg to put in a bag, they do this as part of their beliefs that all the body must be put back together for burial, the reason I bring this up is that when the news reports these bombings, they say , injured or hurt or killed, the truth is they lose limbs and suffer whatever the pals can dream up , it is very gruesome, and the people that do this are spawns from hell, I pray the LORD will help ISRAEL very soon.
And Arafat still lives.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.