JERUSALEM, June 21 — An Israeli tank opened fire on a crowded market in the West Bank city of Jenin today, killing four Palestinians as hundreds gathered to shop in the mistaken belief that an around-the-clock curfew had been suspended, according to witnesses and the Israeli military.
"What happened today was an error," a military spokesman said. "We admit it." An army statement said an investigation is underway.
The dead included a 6-year-old girl, two brothers ages 6 and 13, and a 60-year-old man, hospital officials and Palestinian reporters in Jenin said. The shelling was the deadliest of a series of clashes and military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Thursday night and today that left 10 Palestinians dead.
Initial accounts provided by the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses indicated that only one of those killed since Thursday night was attacking Israeli forces. The rest were civilians, apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The violence came at the end of a bloody week in Israel and the West Bank in which dozens of Israelis were killed or seriously wounded in Palestinian suicide attacks and a number of Palestinians were killed in retaliatory operations by the Israeli military. Many of the Israeli operations were launched after the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced a new policy of capturing and holding Palestinian territory "as long as terror continues."
The reoccupation and curfew in Jenin, for instance, began early Wednesday following the suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem that left 19 Israelis dead and about 50 injured. Israeli forces extended their sweep today into Nablus, the West Bank's largest city.
Five Israelis were killed Thursday night by a Palestinian gunman who sneaked into Itamar, a Jewish settlement near Nablus, and opened fire. Fellow settlers attended funeral services for the five today and then attacked the neighboring Palestinian town of Hawara, where they set several cars ablaze and killed 22-year-old Adnan Odeh, Palestinian sources said.
Sharon's security cabinet modified the new policy tonight, saying the military will reoccupy Palestinian towns and refugee camps to carry out operations against terrorism "as long as needed," according to Israeli television. The new wording was a bow to cabinet members in Sharon's coalition government who oppose the prospect of long-term reoccupation of territory turned over to Palestinian administration since the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
Another victim of the escalating violence was a major policy announcement by President Bush, originally scheduled for this week, in which he was expected to outline a new U.S. peace initiative. The White House has delayed the announcement pending an improvement in the atmosphere, officials in Washington said, but Bush remains determined to pursue his initiative at a more appropriate moment.
There were conflicting accounts about why so many residents went into the streets in Jenin, where Israeli tanks and soldiers have been on constant patrol, firing frequent tank rounds and machine-gun volleys, strictly enforcing the 24-hour curfew. Some residents reached by phone said Israeli forces had announced a temporary relaxation of the curfew to allow people to go outdoors and shop. But the military spokesman denied that.
Ali Jabarin, vice chairman of Jenin's al-Razi hospital, where many of the wounded were taken, said that hundreds of people were under the impression that the curfew had been lifted and were milling about in the streets when at least one tank opened fire around noon.
"I saw with my own eyes hundreds of cars and persons in the market and in the streets. We sent our ambulance to the market to bring us food and water and milk and fruit for the hospital after making sure the curfew was lifted," he said.
But even if everyone was mistaken and the curfew was still in force, he said, that did not give the Israelis the right to fire on civilians with the 105mm or 120mm cannons that commonly equip Israel's 65-ton Merkava tanks.
"They could have said over a loudspeaker: 'People of Jenin, we did not lift the curfew, please go home or we will open fire in 10 minutes,' " he said. "But they did not. They just opened fire on people who were out to get food and water for their children."
According to a statement by the Israeli military, the incident occurred while soldiers were conducting house-to-house searches in Jenin looking for an explosives laboratory. "The force identified a group of Palestinians who broke the curfew over the city and approached the forces. The force fired two tank shells in order to deter the crowd from approaching," killing three people and injuring 10, the statement said.
"An initial inquiry indicates that the force erred in its action," it said.
The military's description of what happened and its toll of dead and wounded differed from other reports from the city.
Palestinian reporters in Jenin, which is a closed military zone and difficult to reach from the outside, said witnesses reported a scene of panic and pandemonium when the tank rounds were fired as hundreds of screaming people scattered in all directions. Killed at the scene, they said, were Sujud Turkey, 6, who was waiting in a car while her father shopped at the market, and a 60-year-old schoolteacher, Hilal Shita. Witnesses said about 20 cars and 30 shops were destroyed by the blasts.
At about the same time, roughly a half-mile away in the neighborhood of el-Basatin, residents said two brothers, Ahmad and Jamil Aziz, 6 and 13 respectively, were killed when a tank round landed near them as they were playing in front of their home.
In other incidents:
ï A 12-year-old boy, identified as Fares Saadi, was killed overnight in Jenin when soldiers blew up and destroyed what they described as an explosives laboratory and the ceiling of the boy's house next door collapsed on him, hospital workers said. An Israeli military spokesman said he had no record of the death.
ï A Palestinian militant who threw a grenade at Israeli border police was shot and killed early today at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Two other Palestinian workmen, waiting to cross into an industrial zone to their jobs, were killed in the gunfire, an Israeli military spokesman said.
ï Also in Gaza, the Associated Press reported that a 10-year-old boy was shot and killed when Israeli troops opened fire at a group of Palestinian children and an AP reporter and photographer. The military spokesman said he had no record of the incident, which reportedly occurred near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.
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