3 Palestinians Die; 2 Israelis Are Stabbed : Mideast: A Muslim report criticizes police for firing as if in a ‘real war’ in Temple Mount killings.
A Palestinian was shot and killed Tuesday after he stabbed an Israeli security guard, another Arab was killed when the bomb he was carrying exploded and a third died during a clash with Israeli troops in the West Bank.
The violence, which included the stabbing of an Israeli police officer, was the latest in a series of attacks between Arabs and Jews after the Oct. 8 blood bath on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Police opened fire on Palestinians on the mount after they had stoned worshipers at the Western Wall below. Twenty Palestinians were killed and 140 wounded, including 22 Jews.
Last week, three Jews were killed and seven wounded in knife and hammer assaults by Arabs, and Defense Minister Moshe Arens warned Israelis on Tuesday to expect more revenge attacks.
Meanwhile, the Waqf, the Muslim religious council that oversees the holy site, issued a report Tuesday on the Temple Mount killings, calling the incident “the day of the martyrs.”
The report accused Israeli police “of shooting intensively with live ammunition, as if they were in a real war.”
It also accused police of setting off the incident by firing tear gas at women worshipers outside a mosque without reason. Palestinians responded with stones, and the police with gunfire, it said.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s office responded to the Waqf report by denouncing it as “superficial, one-sided and nonobjective,” Israel Television reported.
A report by the Israeli government last Friday blamed Palestinians stone throwers for setting off the rioting and said police fired live ammunition in self-defense. But it also blamed police commanders for being inadequately prepared.
One of the Palestinian deaths Tuesday came in the West Bank city of Nablus, where an Arab stabbed an Israeli armed guard on a gasoline tanker truck, the army said.
Israel Army Radio said the civilian guard was stabbed three times in the back and a plainclothes Israeli security man who was passing shot the attacker to death. The guard suffered moderate wounds.
In neighboring Tulkarm, another Palestinian was fatally shot by Israeli troops as they chased a group of Arab murder suspects, who apparently refused orders to halt, the army said.
In the third incident, a Palestinian was killed and two others were injured when a bomb they apparently were preparing went off in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv, police said.
In Jerusalem, meanwhile, a police officer was slightly wounded when he was stabbed in the chest by an Arab near the walled Old City, police said. His assailant was arrested.
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