Ten Palestinians have died in 12 hours at the hands of the Israeli occupation army during a weekend of violence in the West Bank. Four were shot dead early on Sunday near a Jewish settlement outside Hebron, and another was killed in the Jenin refugee camp. The other five, including two children, died when Israel carried out a helicopter missile attack on a car carrying an alleged member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades on Saturday.

"It's a dangerous escalation, and the Israeli Government is completely responsible for this massacre," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, after the Hebron shootings.

OCCUPATION ARMY UNDER ORDERS TO END PEACE PROCESS, SAYS ARAFAT

A missile fired by one of two helicopters on Saturday killed two 15-year-old youths and a Palestinian Resistance activist in a car. A second missile hit a nearby house, killing a nine-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl and wounding seven other people.

Last week four Palestinians, including a mother and her two sons, were killed by tank fire as they slept outside their home in the Gaza Strip.

International and domestic criticism of the occupation army's operations against Palestinian Resistance activists has grown since an Israeli air strike against a top Hamas military commander killed 14 civilians, nine of them children, in Gaza City on July 23.

Arafat was scathing about the latest killings.

"What happened is not a massacre, but massacres, with an Israeli decision from the highest military and political levels to end the peace process," he told reporters.

The weekend deaths also included a Resistance man who had infiltrated an internationally illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank and wounded two settlers and a Palestinian youth who joined a group of Islamic Jihad fighters in a clash with occupation troops in the Jenin refugee camp.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said on Sunday that "all talks with the Israeli side should be suspended after all these massacres."

U.S. SLAMMED FOR SILENCE

A senior Palestinian official said the army was using state terrorism designed to break the Palestinian people as a whole.
"This escalation is designed to scare the Palestinian people and make them surrender. This is state terrorism," said Saeb Erakat, a senior negotiator.

"We call on the international community to stop this bloodshed, this killing in cold blood, this state terrorism. We don't hear the US administration or any other state speaking out about the killing of Palestinian children.

"The president of the United States said he'll fight terrorism but Washington should know they are helping the biggest act of terrorism in the world, the Israeli occupation," said Erakat.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Israeli tank patrols in the West Bank city of Nablus, September 1, 2002. Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinians over the weekend, including two children in a helicopter raid, which led Israel's president on Sunday to call for an investigation into whether the army was "trigger-happy." REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini
- Sep 01 10:58 AM