Gaza City, Nov 19: Three Palestinians were wounded last night when Israeli tanks fired shells in the eastern part of Gaza City, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said, as the cycle of Middle East violence claimed another victim in the West Bank. An unidentified Jewish settler woman was killed when Palestinian gunmen ambushed her car at a junction near the West Bank settlement of Rimonim, just east of Ramallah, Israeli medical sources said.

In the Gaza operation, the sources said that two of the three people wounded were members of the al Aqsa martyrs brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, while the third was a passerby. Early yesterday, four Palestinians were wounded when Israeli troops clashed with gunmen as they surrounded and then partially destroyed a base of the Palestinian preventive security forces in Gaza city.

Israel sent tanks and helicopter Gunships against Palestinian security forces in Gaza accusing them of complicity in "terrorism". The latest violence came as Israel mulled extending the area under its direct control in the divided west bank city of Hebron where an earlier ambush attack killed nine Israeli soldiers or border police and three armed Jewish settlers.

Bureau Report