THE MIDDLE EAST: The United Nations voiced anger yesterday over Israel's killing of a UN official in the West Bank, as Israel pressed ahead with military operations against Palestinians it says are behind suicide bombings.
The Israeli army admitted its forces killed Mr Iain Hook, a British UN Relief Works Agency official killed on Friday during a skirmish with Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp, saying troops mistook an object he was holding for a weapon.
But a UN official challenged Israel's contention that Palestinians had fired at soldiers from the compound.
"I am very sad and angry that the man was shot dead while working in a clearly marked UN compound," said Mr Paul McCann, a spokesman for UNRWA.
Mr McCann said a UN investigator would arrive from headquarters in New York later in the day to launch a full inquiry into the death of Mr Hook (54), who had been overseeing the reconstruction of Jenin camp, heavily damaged during a previous Israeli military incursion.
UNRWA was set up after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to care for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the founding of the state of Israel.
Scores of Palestinians showed up with flowers when Mr Hook's body was put into a UN ambulance in Jenin for transfer to Jerusalem yesterday before being shipped home.
In Bethlehem, Israeli forces maintained a tight grip on the city they reoccupied after a Palestinian suicide bombing killed 11 people on a Jerusalem commuter bus on Thursday.
The army searched the office of the Palestinian governor of Bethlehem and said it had detained three would-be suicide bombers, one of them a woman, and another 31 wanted Palestinians in the West Bank city since the operation began on Friday.
The Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, appeared unlikely to order any relaxation of the clampdown in Bethlehem ahead of a leadership election on Thursday in his right-wing Likud party, where he is being challenged by hawkish Foreign Minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
Commenting on its own preliminary investigation of the Jenin shooting, the army said Palestinian gunmen were firing at troops from inside the UNRWA compound and through a nearby alley during an operation to arrest a wanted Islamic militant.
In Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers have blocked off the Church of the Nativity, saying it wanted to prevent militants from taking refuge there as they did during an army invasion in April. - (Reuters)