Israel digs into positions in West Bank towns

In the Gaza Strip, 3 Israelis are killed when an explosion goes off near a tank

By HADEEL WAHDAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Israel digs into positions in West Bank towns — Staten Island Advance, 14 March 2002 — Staten Island Advance · Staten Island, NY · 14 March 2002

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Transcribed from the clipping

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli tanks moved deeper into two West Bank towns today, just ahead of the arrival of a U.S. mediator, and troops killed four Palestinian gunmen in intense street fighting. In the Gaza Strip, three Israelis were killed when an explosion went off near a tank. In biblical Bethlehem, Palestinian militiamen shot dead two suspected informers for Israel.

The attackers then tried to hang the body of one victim from a building on Manger Square, overlooking the Church of the Nativity, but were stopped by Palestinian policemen. The militiamen left the scene, firing their weapons into the air. In Ramallah, Palestinian witnesses initially said some Israeli forces were pulling out early today.

However, by daybreak it became clear that troops remained in the city, and a regional army commander, Col. Yair Golan, said tanks had changed positions for tactical reasons, but that the Ramallah operation was not over. Palestinian security officials said four Palestinian gunmen were killed in fighting with Israeli troops early today.

Israeli tanks also drove deeper into Bethlehem, with some taking about positions about 250 yards from Manger Square. In the Gaza Strip, three Israelis were killed and two others were wounded when Palestinians set off a roadside bomb next to a tank, the army said.

Israel Radio said the tank was escorting a convoy of civilian vehicles in southern Gaza when a powerful bomb was detonated, apparently by remote control. One person was killed outright by the blast and two others burned alive in a vehicle, radio reports said.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

Clipped page with photograph, headline, dek and four columns; no masthead, no folio, no printed date, so date is label-only. The in-page advertisement reads 'Today Thru Wed. March 20th!', which is consistent with a mid-March date but proves nothing by itself; it is an advertisement, not a dateline.

IMPORTANT WIRE-COPY FINDING: this is the same Hadeel Wahdan AP dispatch as the Birmingham Post-Herald clipping on slide 63, same day, but the two papers did not print the same words.

The Post-Herald ends the Ciriello paragraph at 'a French photographer was hit by shrapnel from a small bomb.' The Advance prints 'a French photographer working nearby was hit by shrapnel from a small bomb apparently planted by Palestinian fighters.' The Advance also carries three further paragraphs the Post-Herald did not run, including the Foreign Press Association statement criticising army fire at reporters and the search of the AP's own Ramallah office by about 20 Israeli troops.

The printer's error 'with some taking about positions about 250 yards' appears in both papers and is kept as printed. The paper also prints 'Arafat aid Nabil Abu Rdeneh' for 'aide'; kept as printed in the paper, not carried into this excerpt.

Photo caption: 'An Israeli army tank patrols the empty streets in the West Bank Town of Ramallah.' (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — note the paper's capital 'Town'.

Cite this clipping

"Israel digs into positions in West Bank towns," Staten Island Advance, 14 March 2002. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2002-118. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2002-118