Palestinian militants killed in surprise attack

By The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times

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The deadly shootout came on a day that Israeli and Palestinian officials signaled readiness to set a long-delayed meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian Authority counterpart, Ahmed Qureia.

Both sides indicated that the talks might take place as soon as next week.

Qureia, however, told reporters in Oslo, Norway, that the date of a meeting with Sharon "is not fixed yet."

In Jenin, a focus of tensions between the two sides in the northern West Bank, Palestinians who witnessed the shootout said Israeli troops in plainclothes fired without provocation on a car with the five gunmen inside.

The military spokesman said the five members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, were killed when Border Patrol troops stopped their car at about 3 p.m. None of the Israelis were injured, the spokesman said.

"They were caught by surprise by undercover agents and were not prepared," Zakaria Zbeida, al-Aqsa commander for the Jenin area said in a telephone interview. He described the shooting as an ambush.

An Israeli spokesman said several of the slain men were wanted for alleged involvement in attacks against Jewish settlements near Jenin.

"All of us are wanted by the Israelis," said Zbeida, who ranks high on Israel's most-wanted list. "We don't think they are going to greet us with flowers, but that doesn't mean they have the right to assassinate our members."

Zbeida identified the five dead men as Ayman Seaany, Mohammed Kherallah, Ihab Abu Jafr, Basel Mahdy and Amer Ghoul.

The Israeli military spokesman said three of the men were armed with M-16 rifles and one carried a Kalashnikov. He said he had no information on the fifth man.
 
Based on the accounts of both the Israeli spokesman and Zbeida, it appeared most of the militants were shot dead before they realized their assailants were Israeli troops.

The military spokesman described the encounter as "a small gunbattle."

The disclosure of plans for what would be the first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in eight months at the leadership level came on the eve of the scheduled arrival of three ranking U.S. envoys trying to revive direct negotiations under the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan.

As Sharon's government promotes its disengagement plan, Egypt increasingly has been drawn into discussions about the fate of Gaza, the impoverished coastal strip that Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East War.

Egypt is concerned about the potential for anarchy in the wake of any Israeli pullout from Gaza, which borders Egypt.

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