Israeli tanks 'enter Gaza airport'
Israeli tanks were today reported to have entered Gaza airport, after warplanes destroyed two of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s helicopters in Gaza and blasted West Bank security installations.
Hospital officials said 10 Palestinians were wounded in a daytime missile attack by helicopter gunships near Arafat’s seaside headquarters that raised a plume of black smoke over Gaza City. Arafat was in the West Bank at the time of the attack yesterday.
Early today, Palestinians said Israeli tanks had entered Gaza airport, firing machine guns and damaging the runway. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Sharon convened an emergency cabinet meeting to decide the scope of Israel’s response to suicide bombings and shootings by Islamic militant groups that killed 26 people in Israel on Saturday and Sunday.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said Sharon’s speech, coupled with the air strikes, signalled an Israeli attempt to ‘‘overthrow the Palestinian Authority’’.
Palestinian officials said the harsh reprisals undermined a sincere Arafat effort to crack down on Islamic militants in the wake of the attacks.
However, Israeli defence minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told reporters that Israel had no intention of bringing down Arafat’s administration.
Brig Gen Ron Kitrey, the Israeli military spokesman, said helicopters used by Arafat to shuttle between the West Bank and Gaza were targeted because ‘‘they were symbols of his mobility and freedom’’.
Since Sunday night, Palestinian security forces have rounded up about 110 members of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the group that claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings in a Jerusalem shopping centre.
Ten young Israelis died in one blast while the other suicide bombing killed 15 on a bus in Haifa on Sunday.
A Hamas shooting in the Gaza Strip on Sunday killed one Israeli.
