Six Palestinians killed in explosion in West Bank

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An explosion ripped through a car parts store in the West Bank early today and killed six Palestinian activists in Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in one of the deadliest single episodes in 10 months of Mideast violence.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli helicopters fired rockets at Palestinian police headquarters sending white smoke rising from the compound as people ran frantically from the buildings into the street, witnesses said.

Ambulances rushed to the scene, but there was no immediate word on casualties. The police compound is near the home and offices of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, though he was out of the region at the time of the afternoon attack. The Israeli military said the police building was being used to make mortars.

The West Bank blast destroyed the car parts store – a roadside tin shack outside the West Bank city of Nablus – and came only hours after a tense confrontation between Israeli police and Palestinians at Jerusalem's most contested religious shrine.

Palestinians called the predawn blast part of Israel's efforts to kill suspected militants. "The Israeli government continues its policy of assassination," said Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman. "This policy will destroy any hope for peace. Resistance will continue."

But Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin–Pelossof called the explosion a "work accident," Israel's euphemism for a Palestinian–made bomb that goes off prematurely. "This is not the first time that the Palestinians have accused Israel of assassinations when explosions like this occurred," she told army radio.

Israeli security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said three of the Palestinians were wanted by Israel. They were believed to be involved two bomb attacks in recent months, the sources said.

The force of the blast blew the roof off the shack, and it was badly burned inside, suggesting the explosion came from within the structure. Palestinian witnesses said they did not hear helicopters or tank guns – signals of earlier Israeli attacks.

Palestinian Mansour Barahmah said he was sleeping when he heard a powerful explosion shortly after 1am today.

"I went there immediately and found a fire," he said. "The bodies were still burning."

The bodies were dismembered by the explosion, and some body parts were tossed 30 metres from a table where the men had been sitting on old car seats, he said. Playing cards, which were apparently in use at the time, were smeared with blood.

All six of the dead were members of Fatah, the movement headed by Arafat, the Palestinian leader. The men, aged 22 to 31, regularly slept in the shack, fearing the Israelis would attack them in their homes, Palestinian witnesses said. A seventh man in the shack was seriously wounded, they added.

Also today, two Palestinians, ages 17 and 11, were shot by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza Strip near by border with Egypt, Palestinian security sources said. The Palestinians claimed the Israelis fired without provocation, the Israeli army said troops came under fire from anti–tank grenades and shot back.

In another incident, a small bomb placed on shelf exploded in a supermarket on King George Street, one of Jerusalem's main thoroughfares. The bomb caused damage, but no one was hurt, said police spokesman Shmuel Ben–Ruby.

Today's violence followed a tense day Sunday in Jerusalem, where Palestinians rained stones on Jewish worshippers commemorating a holy day at the Western Wall, prompting Israeli police to storm a mosque and drive back the crowd with stun grenades.

Sunday's clash came exactly 10 months after the current round of Mideast violence erupted inside the same hilltop compound where two large mosques were built atop the ruins of the biblical Jewish temples.