Another Sirhan Sirhan

But Suspect In Kibbutz Attack Not Related To RFK Assassin

(AP)  Israeli officials on Wednesday identified the Palestinian gunman in a weekend shooting attack as Sirhan Sirhan, a 19-year-old resident of this refugee camp, but withdrew initial claims that he was a distant cousin of the Robert Kennedy assassin with the same name.

Relatives of the suspected gunman insisted they have no blood ties to the Kennedy assassin, who they said lived in the predominantly Christian village of Taibeh in the West Bank before emigrating to the United States. The Sirhans in the Tulkarem refugee camp are Muslims.

Five Israelis, including a mother and her two small boys, were killed in Sunday's attack on Kibbutz Metzer, an Israeli communal farm near the West Bank.

Dan Seaman, the director of Israel's Government Press Office, said that Israel identified the attacker as Sirhan Sirhan, but no longer claims he was related to the Kennedy assassin.

"Israeli authorities originally believed there was a relationship between the two, but after further research cannot assume that there is," Seaman said, declining to explain further.

The Israeli daily Haaretz had carried a report on its website citing Israeli officials as saying there apparently was a connection between the two Sirhans.

Kennedy was shot dead in 1968 at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel by Sirhan Sirhan, a 25-year-old Palestinian immigrant who said he felt betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. At the time, Kennedy was a Democratic senator and a presidential candidate.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militia, which carried out the kibbutz attack, has refused to release the gunman's name because he is still at large and wanted by the Israelis.

However, following the attack, Israeli troops raided the Tulkarem refugee camp, searching homes of members of the Sirhan clan and arresting one of the suspected gunman's uncles. Amjad Dersi, 50, a relative of Sirhan, said the suspect's father, a colonel in Force 17, Yasser Arafat's elite security force, has fled.

The Kennedy assassin is serving a life sentence in a California state prison. His lawyers have suggested that if he was released from prison he could return to the Palestinian territories. Sirhan has been denied parole 10 times and prosecutors say his return to the West Bank could further enflame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.