Israel Kills Two Teens in Attack Gone Awry

JERUSALEM — The targets were two wanted militants from the Palestinian group Hamas, blamed for causing many Israeli deaths at the hands of suicide bombers and gun-wielding assailants.

But Israeli authorities acknowledged that the men they had hoped to eliminate Sunday with a missile strike in the Gaza Strip apparently escaped unscathed -- and that two young Palestinian passersby had died instead.

In a scenario increasingly typical of what the Israeli government calls “targeted killings” -- which are deemed assassinations by Israeli human rights groups and Palestinians -- military helicopters fired rockets at a car believed to be carrying the fugitives.

At the time of the attack, the vehicle was traveling through an orchard in central Gaza near the Khan Yunis refugee camp. Witnesses said the wanted men, shielded by foliage, managed to scramble out of the vehicle, escaping injury. But two teenage Palestinians without known connections to militant groups were killed, Palestinian officials said. The teens may have been walking or biking nearby, but further details of the circumstances were not clear late Sunday.

In nearly 28 months of fighting, Israel has tracked down and killed dozens of wanted Palestinian militants accused of masterminding attacks against Israelis. But the strikes, often staged in crowded Palestinian urban areas, have also hurt and killed scores of innocent bystanders.

In a separate action earlier in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, Israeli forces blew up metal workshops where they claim Palestinians made rockets and mortars. Factory owners denied that any weapons were made in the facilities.

Also Sunday, a Palestinian gunman apparently slipped through security in the Israeli farming community of Gadish and killed a man, police said.

Gadish lies near the northern West Bank city of Jenin, which has been a hotbed of violence throughout the Palestinian uprising that broke out in September 2000. The local police chief, David Sisso, told Israel Radio that three Israeli troops had been hurt in the incident.

The town is not far from the community of Maor, where an Israeli couple, immigrants from Switzerland, escaped injury earlier this month when the weapon of a Palestinian gunman jammed after he broke into their house.

At an Israeli Cabinet meeting Sunday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sharply brushed off an appeal Saturday by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for calm in the weeks remaining before Israel’s Jan. 28 election, saying that if the Palestinian Authority president wanted to halt violence, he would have done so months ago.

The vote pits Sharon against Amram Mitzna, head of the left-leaning Labor Party, who advocates a unilateral pullout of Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers from the Gaza Strip and wants to reopen talks with the Palestinians without conditions.

Despite a sharp drop-off in support for Sharon due to a scandal over corruption and vote-buying in his Likud Party, voters still seem little inclined to support Mitzna’s dovish stance. Instead, they seem likely to lend their backing to other conservative parties.

In other violence Sunday, the army said Israeli troops shot and killed two gunmen of unknown affiliation near the Egyptian border with Israel. An Israeli was also killed in the fighting, which took place near the Nitzana border crossing, the army said, but no other details were immediately available.