Sharon calls for increase in Palestinian 'losses'

MIDDLE EAST: Israeli troops killed 17 Palestinians, including a medical official and the wife and three children of a Hamas …

MIDDLE EAST: Israeli troops killed 17 Palestinians, including a medical official and the wife and three children of a Hamas activist, on a day of dizzying violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli journalists last night quoted the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, calling to "increase the losses" among Palestinians, in order to "halt terror".

Last night Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a Palestinian building where Mr Yasser Arafat was believed to be under siege but there were no reports of injuries.

As Hamas vowed revenge for the killings, Palestinian leaders urged the US and EU to step in and halt the escalating conflict. More than 40 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops since late last week, and more than 20 Israelis killed by Palestinian bombers and gunmen.

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Mr Sharon is reported to have said the Palestinian leadership had to be dealt "a heavy blow... from every direction" to make clear "that they will achieve nothing through terror" and thus pave the way to resumed negotiations. "It's them or us," he was reported to have said. "This is war."

Indeed on both sides of the conflict, which has claimed more than 900 Palestinian and 300 Israeli lives over the past 17 months, there is now increasing talk of all-out war - a full-scale confrontation between the Israeli army and the tens of thousands of armed men loyal to Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

Yesterday's Israeli army activity - which included raids on two Palestinian refugee camps - came after the government decided overnight to intensify its military actions against the authority, along with other targets, now that members of Mr Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO are eclipsing Islamic groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad in leading the violence; both a Saturday night suicide bombing in Jerusalem and a sniper's attack on a military roadblock in the West Bank on Sunday, were claimed by groups linked to Fatah. Another victim of the Jerusalem blast died yesterday of his injuries, bringing the toll of Israelis killed in that attack to 10.

In the gravest attack yesterday, one or more shells fired by an Israeli tank in the West Bank town of Ramallah killed Ms Bushra Abu Kweik and her three children - daughters Aziza (14) and Barra (13) and son Mohammed (10) - whom she was bringing home from school. Two more children were killed in a second car nearby. The bereaved father and husband, Sheikh Hussein Abu Kweik, a Hamas political official, vowed that Mr Sharon and "his filthy gang" would "pay a very high price for this crime".

The Israeli army issued an apology over the deaths, denying that it had botched an assassination attempt on Sheikh Abu Kweik, who was not in the area, and saying the tank had been aiming at "a vehicle carrying armed Palestinian policemen".

Also killed yesterday was Dr Khalil Suleiman, the head of the Red Crescent emergency services in Jenin. He died when the ambulance in which he was travelling was fired on by Israeli troops at a checkpoint.

Dr Suleiman was apparently on his way to take charge of emergency medical efforts in Jenin, where Israeli ground troops and helicopter fire killed two women among several fatalities during the raid.

The Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip's Rafah refugee camp - two gunmen and a father, said by Palestinian officials to have been trying to pull his child away from an area where gunbattles were flaring.

Meanwhile, at a roadblock just outside the town of Qalkilya, a Palestinian teenager was shot dead by troops. The soldiers said he had charged at them with a knife; Palestinian eyewitnesses said he had posed no threat and was hit at long range.

Mr Sharon told a parliamentary committee yesterday that Israel would now maintain "continuous military pressure" on the Palestinian Authority and other groups, including further incursions into refugee camps to seize explosives and pre-empt attacks. Mr Sharon has told the Bush administration that the Israeli army will now focus on Fatah-linked groups as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.