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Israel Announces Arrests of Palestinian Terror Cell
Israeli security forces Sunday claimed that they have arrested six members of a seven-man Palestinian "terror cell" in a sweep in the West Bank and Gaza Strip several weeks ago.
According to security sources, the seventh member of the cell was killed during the capture.
The sources claimed that during the interrogation, the cell members "admitted that they had carried out a series of bombing attacks in central Israel in the last two months and planned to set up more bombs ahead of the arrests."
All the members are activists of the Palestinian mainstream movement Fatah led by Palestinian National Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, the sources said.
There is no immediate reaction from the Palestinian side, but analysts pointed out that the time for publicizing such arrests was suspicious, as three Palestinian women were just killed by Israeli tank fire overnight.
Israel may want to dodge severe international criticism on the fatalities by announcing the arrests, they noted.
The deaths of the three Palestinian women were the first of its kind since Arafat announced a ceasefire on June 2. Over the past eight months of violence between the two sides, more than 570 people had been killed, most of them Palestinians.
Israeli security forces claimed that the cell was responsible for at least seven bomb attacks, including one in northern Israeli city of Netanya, 30 kilometers north of Tel Aviv, and three in Kfar Sava, 20 kilometers northeast of Tel Aviv, and two in the nearby communities of Hod Hasharon and Sha'arei Tikva.
The cell also planned to send a suicide bomber to attack an Israeli army hitchhiking station at a junction near Ra'anan, just outside Tel Aviv, and plant a car bomb in a city in central Israel, the sources added.
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