Guerrillas Israel

Israeli security forces Sunday ambushed and shot to death three Palestinians, one of whom the army called a key gunman for the militant group Hamas. The three men--later identified as Jihad Ghulmeh, Adel Falah and Tarek Natsheh--were sitting in a white Subaru sedan, apparently preparing to mount a terrorist attack, when they were ambushed by a special border patrol unit, an army spokesman said. According to the army, there was an exchange of gunfire.

Arab gunmen killed an Israeli secret police officer and wounded two others in an ambush in the West Bank on Sunday, the Israeli army said. "A General Security Services (commonly known as Shin Bet secret police) man, Noam Cohen, was killed this afternoon, and two other workers of the service were wounded," an army spokeswoman said. "During a GSS operation this afternoon in the center of Ramallah, there was shooting from an ambush at the GSS personnel who were in a vehicle," she said.

Guerrillas killed four Israeli soldiers and wounded five in an ambush that drew retaliatory air and artillery strikes. The Israeli military said its jets attacked "Hezbollah terrorist targets" and scored "accurate hits" after the ambush in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon. There was no immediate word on casualties among the guerrillas. The Israeli victims were the first Israelis killed in Lebanon in almost two months.

Muslim militants shot and killed a senior Israeli commander and wounded three other soldiers in an ambush Friday in the occupied Gaza Strip, the army said. The military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, said it killed Lt. Col. Meir Mintz, 36, one of only two officers of that rank slain since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began six years ago. Lt. Gen.

Two Israeli businessmen were gunned down as they drove through an Arab village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, apparently by Muslim fundamentalists attempting to upset plans for Palestinian self-government being worked out by Israeli and PLO negotiators in Paris.

After a day of furious clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli troops in the strife-torn Gaza Strip, Israeli military commanders agreed Tuesday evening to scale down their searches for fugitive guerrillas in return for Palestinian efforts to restore a cease-fire.

The cease-fire between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization is breaking down rapidly as Israeli forces, operating largely undercover and striking through ambushes, hunt fugitive guerrillas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Challenged on their home turf and embarrassed by the failure of the increasingly controversial pact with Israel to bring immediate peace, PLO units are starting to fight back in daily skirmishes with Israeli patrols.

Israeli security forces, continuing their campaign against the militant Islamic Resistance Movement, shot dead another of the Palestinian guerrilla group's senior commanders in Jerusalem on Friday while protests still simmered against the last ambush killing in the Gaza Strip. Police said Khaled Mustafa Zer, a guerrilla commander based in the West Bank city of Hebron, was tracked to a hide-out in a suburb of East Jerusalem, where he fled the house in which he had taken refuge.

With a bit of a swagger, the commander of the Fatah Hawks, one of the main Palestinian guerrilla units in the Gaza Strip, walked into the Israeli military government's offices in Rafah this week and surrendered after nearly two years on the "most wanted" list.

Israeli troops, striking hard against the Palestinian force most bitterly opposed to peace, raided six hide-outs of the Islamic militant group Hamas in the occupied Gaza Strip on Saturday, pounding them with antitank missiles and killing two top commanders. A sweeping Israeli manhunt for Hamas activists left at least 10 Gaza homes ruined or damaged, Palestinian journalists said. The army reported that it had made 16 arrests and killed the two Hamas leaders in a shootout.