Sharon Heads For U.S. Today

As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon got ready Sunday for a trip to the U.S., Israeli forces shot dead five Palestinians in three separate confrontations and another was killed when a public telephone exploded in his hand, according to the army and witnesses.

Mohammed Shtewie Abayat was speaking on a telephone about 30 yards from Beit Jala Hospital near the West Bank city of Bethlehem when it exploded, killing him instantly, according to doctors. Relatives said he was a militiaman in a Palestinian group which has been involved in numerous suicide bombings.

Palestinians said one of those killed in other incidents was a 4-year-old boy, shot during what the army said was a firefight as troops searched for weapons smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip.

A diplomatic source says U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer sent a strongly worded message to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office over the weekend, saying Israel had not met promises to ease tough restrictions imposed on the Palestinians.

The move came as Sharon prepared for his trip to the United States, leaving Monday and meeting Wednesday with President Bush at the White House.

The Bush administration has strongly supported Israel in the Mideast conflict, especially in recent months.

Kurtzer's letter called for Israel to ease its military grip on the West Bank Palestinian cities it occupied after suicide bombings in June, allow Palestinians greater freedom of movement and turn over withheld taxes that Israel collected on behalf of the Palestinians, according to the diplomatic source and Israeli newspapers.

Israel's Cabinet on Sunday discussed the possibility of removing some military blockades in and around Palestinian areas and handing over the tax money.

Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar said no decision was taken, and Israel's response would depend on cessation of Palestinian attacks.

"Israel's policy is to ease humanitarian and economic conditions," Saar said. "At the same time it is hard to include a dramatic change on the economic front while terrorism continues and the Palestinian Authority has failed to implement any of its promises."

Saar said that the subject would be on the agenda when Sharon and Bush meet.

In Beit Jala, Abayat's brother Moussa said the two had brought their mother to the hospital and 28-year-old Mohammed went outside to use the telephone. He "started to speak on it and it suddenly blew up. Parts of his body were everywhere."

Moussa Abayat called the explosion "an assassination of my brother, who is a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade," which has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings in the past two years.

Israel's military said it had no immediate comment. In the past, Israel has said it targeted and killed some men suspect of terrorism. Some of those slayings have led to waves of revenge attacks against Israelis.

Another member of the same clan, Atef Abayat, died when his car exploded in October 2001. A third, Hussein Abayat, was killed in an Israeli rocket attack in November. Israel had accused both of killing Israelis. It was not immediately clear how closely they were related to Mohammed Abayat.

Another Palestinian militant wanted by Israel, Osama Jawabri, was killed by an exploding public telephone in Nablus on June 24, 2001. An exploding mobile phone killed Yehia Ayash, chief bombmaker for the Islamic group Hamas, on Jan. 5, 1996. Israel never claimed responsibility for killing either man.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers killed two armed men who crossed into southern Israel from Egypt, said the commander of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv. Three soldiers were wounded in a gunfight that broke out, he added.

The Ahmed Abu al-Rish Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah movement led by Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility for the infiltration. The announcement was made from loudspeakers at mosques in the Gaza town of Khan Younis.

It was not clear how the infiltrators entered Israel, though there is a tunnel network in the region that goes from one side of the border to the other, the military says.

Not far away, in the southern Gaza Strip, army troops entered the Rafah refugee camp to search for tunnels and clashes broke out that left two Palestinians dead, including a 4-year-old boy, and 28 wounded, according to Palestinian witnesses.

Palestinians said the soldiers blew up five houses. The army said one house was blown up but other houses were damaged when the army destroyed tunnels. The army said it fired on Palestinians after militants shot at troops and threw grenades.

One of the dead Palestinians was 4-year-old Tawfik Hussan Bereka, said Dr. Ali Mussa at the Rafah hospital.

Moussa Bereka, a relative of the dead boy, said the 60 people in his extended family ran from the house in their pajamas. The boy was wounded as they ran and died later at the hospital. "They did not even give us one minute to evacuate our belongings or to leave safely," Bereka said.

The Israeli commander, Ziv, said the troops entered the camp shortly after midnight and no houses were blown up until almost 5 a.m.

"The occupants were given at least 35 minutes to get out of the house," he told The Associated Press.

In the West Bank, Palestinians said troops killed a 56-year-old woman and wounded two other women. The women were taking a side road to evade an Israeli roadblock near the town of Jenin when soldiers opened fire on their car, witnesses said. The military said it was checking the report.