The United States has condemned an incident in which Israeli soldiers fired on a convoy of Palestinian officials returning from security talks. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the shooting "a very serious incident," and said that it had prompted immediate phone calls from Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
The Palestinian side claimed that the officials were deliberately targeted, but the Israeli army has rejected this, saying that soldiers at the Erez border crossing into Gaza thought they could hear gunfire coming from the cars. The Palestinians had been on their way back from talks with Israeli security chiefs aimed at trying to end more than six months of escalating violence.
In a separate incident, an Islamic Jihad militant died instantly when a booby-trapped public telephone blew up in the West Bank town of Jenin while he was using it. Palestinians accused Israel of having assassinated him. Also, Ariel Sharon's month-old government today announced it would auction off West Bank land for the building of 700 more Jewish settler houses.
