Israel Raids West Bank Jail

Israeli forces burst into a jail Tuesday in the West Bank town of Jericho, demanding the surrender of prisoners, including Ahmed Saadat, the accused mastermind of the killing of an Israeli Cabinet minister.

The operation sparked a shootout with Palestinian police that killed one Palestinian officer and a prisoner, Palestinian security officials said. Several hours into the raid, the first Palestinian prisoners came out, were blindfolded and ordered to strip to their underwear, but the top wanted man was not among them, witnesses said.

A senior Israeli military official said Tuesday that inmates at a West Bank prison surrounded by Israeli troops must either surrender or face death.

The colonel, who briefed reporters, said Israel's main objective is to arrest those at the prison."The objective is to arrest them, but there are no negotiations. Either they come out or they will be killed," the colonel told reporters.

He said that of 200 people inside, 44 have surrendered so far. He said the main targets of the raid, including those involved in the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister in 2001, have not yet come out.

The main target of the raid, Ahmed Saadat, spoke by telephone from the prison to the Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera.

"We are not going to surrender. We are going to face our destiny with courage," Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small PLO faction, told Al-Jazeera.

The operation is the most high-profile Israeli incursion into a Palestinian town in months and came just two weeks before Israel holds hard-fought national elections. Palestinians condemned the raid as a campaign stunt, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blamed the United States and British governments.

U.S. and British observers who had monitored the jail for the past four years withdrew early Tuesday morning - just before the raid - citing security concerns. The Israeli government ordered the raid because the monitors were withdrawn, the army said, blaming the Palestinians for violating the agreement regarding the prisoners.

Dozens of prisoners in their underwear came of the prison building, where they were being searched and blindfolded by Israeli troops. Some of them were taken away. None of them appeared to be the six targeted men.

Israeli forces entered the town Tuesday morning and surrounded the prison, calling over loudspeakers for prisoners to give themselves up. The troops then burst through the front gate of the jail with a bulldozer, drove inside in armored personnel carriers, and engaged in a shootout with the Palestinian police, said Akram Rajoub, the local security commander.

One policeman standing near the gate was killed in the shootout and a prisoner was also killed, security officials said. It was not clear if the prisoner was one of those wanted by Israel.

Two large explosions were heard at the prison and thick smoke filled the sky. Children in the town threw rocks at the Israeli soldiers and burning tires were put in the roads. Troops were later heard calling for all the prisoners and guards to come out of the jail.

The prisoners said they would not surrender.

"Our prison is surrounded on all sides by Israelis. They are asking us over loudspeaker to come out," Ahed Abu Ghoulmi, one of the targeted prisoners, told The Associated Press by telephone. "We will not come out under any circumstances."

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