Investigation shows U.N. worker killed by Israeli armed forces

JERUSALEM -- Israel on Saturday said its troops fatally shot a U.N. official during a West Bank firefight with Palestinian gunmen because he had what appeared to be a gun and because Palestinians were firing at troops from inside the U.N. compound.

The United Nations disputed the army's claim, denying Palestinian gunmen were in the U.N. compound and saying the slain official, Iain Hook, was armed only with a cell phone he was using to try to evacuate U.N. staff.

The army released its preliminary findings into the Friday gun battle in the Jenin refugee camp, saying Palestinian gunmen used the U.N. compound as cover to fire at Israeli troops searching for a wanted militant.

Iain Hook, a British senior manager of UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, was killed inside the compound -- the first senior U.N. official to die in over two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

The dispute over his death was likely to inflame long-strained relations between Israel and the United Nations. While U.N. resolutions paved the way for creating the Jewish state in 1948, relations have been poisoned for much of the time since.

The army findings were released amid fresh violence in which two Palestinian militants blew themselves up on an explosives-packed boat off the Gaza Strip, injuring four Israeli soldiers on a nearby navy patrol boat in a rare sea attack. The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Bethlehem reoccupied

Israel also pressed its occupation of the West Bank town of Bethlehem, reoccupied Friday after a suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem killed 11 people. Israeli troops demolished four homes of militants, arrested 26 people, and searched the office of Bethlehem's governor, witnesses said.

Israel Army Radio reported Saturday that an initial investigation into Hook's death showed that an Israeli soldier shot him as he came out of an alley from where Palestinian gunmen had been firing earlier, mistaking a cell phone he was carrying for a hand grenade.

In a statement, the army said it expressed sorrow over Hook's death.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat also sent a letter of condolence to Hook's family, the officials said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military closed the Mediterranean waters off Gaza, barring all Palestinian fishing, after Palestinian militants detonated a boat full of explosives late Friday near an Israeli patrol boat.

The Palestinian vessel had entered Israeli-controlled waters off northern Gaza. It was approached by an Israeli navy patrol, which fired warning shots, an army statement said.

The boat exploded, killing two Palestinians on board. Four Israeli soldiers on the patrol boat were injured, the army said.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, saying its boat rammed the Israeli patrol boat, sinking it. An Israeli rescue boat retrieved the four casualties.

The army said the patrol boat was damaged but made it back to shore.

Col. Danny Maoz, a naval commander in the Gaza Strip, said a similar attempt was staged in November 2000 off the southern Gaza Strip. In that incident, a lone suicide attacker detonated the explosives beside an Israeli patrol boat, but no Israelis were injured, he said.

Meanwhile, Israel continued its hunt for 30 wanted militants in and around Bethlehem, the hometown of the suicide bomber in Thursday's Jerusalem bus attack.

On Saturday, Israeli forces demolished the homes of four militants of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, linked to Arafat's Fatah faction, bringing to six the number of houses destroyed since Friday, witnesses said.

Troops also blasted open the door of the office of Bethlehem Gov. Mohammad Madini and were seen carrying out computers and boxes of papers, witnesses said. The governor was not inside at the time. Military officials said troops searched the office and left.

With the incursion in Bethlehem, Israel has retaken control of all Palestinian population centers in the West Bank except Jericho, as it did during major military offensives in April and June.