Israelis kill 4 Palestinians near Jewish Gaza settlement

Israeli Prime Minister Barak with U.S. Secretary of Defense Cohen

Palestinians say dead men were unarmed; Israelis say otherwise

In this story: Palestinian militants claim attack on Israeli civilian U.S. defense chief in region RELATED STORIES, SITES

CNN Correspondents Jerrold Kessel, Tom Mintier and James Martone contributed to this report.

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Israeli forces opened fire on two cars driving near a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing four Palestinians and sparking a dispute over how the incident began.

The Israelis said the vehicles were occupied by militiamen tied to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The Israelis said the vehicles tried to burst through an Israeli roadblock near the Morag settlement at a high speed. But the Palestinians said the occupants were innocent, unarmed civilians.

MESSAGE BOARD Mideast peace

"Israeli tanks opened fire on two Palestinian civilian vehicles," said a Palestinian police officer at the scene. "We are talking about four Palestinians killed and we are still checking for others."

The Palestinians said a fifth man was wounded and arrested, but the Israelis said they knew nothing of a fifth man.

The Palestinian security chief in the area called the incident a massacre, but the Israelis disputed the contention that the dead Palestinians were unarmed and said that the roadblock had been set up to stop Palestinian gunmen.

"During an operation initiated by the army near Morag, the army killed a senior Fatah-Tanzim activist, Jamal al-Qadr Hassan al-Razaq, during an attempt to arrest him as he traveled in his car ... and tried to run a military roadblock," the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. "Three other Fatah-Tanzim activists were killed in the incident.

The Palestinians said al-Razaq was a Fatah administrative official and not a militiaman.

Palestinian militants claim attack on Israeli civilian

Wednesday's incident came as a radical Palestinian group claimed responsibility for an attack in Gaza that wounded an Israeli civilian Tuesday.

One of the cars fired upon in the Gaza incident that killed four Palestinians

"A unit of our Omar al-Mukhtar forces attacked a military enemy post near Kfar Darom settlement in Gaza," said a statement by Fatah al-Assifa. "They lobbed a bomb at the enemy position and followed it by machine gun fire."

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that Palestinian gunmen shot an Israeli civilian in the head as he was traveling in a convoy in Gaza while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was visiting a military base nearby.

The Damascus-based Fatah al-Assifa, also known as Fatah Uprising, is a splinter group opposed to Arafat's main Fatah faction.

As gunfire echoed overnight in the West Bank and Gaza, some in Israel compared the conflict's similarity to the guerrilla attacks that Israeli soldiers faced in southern Lebanon before ending a 22-year occupation in May.

"All the things that characterized Lebanon have now reached the Gaza Strip," Israeli Army Radio said.

The latest fatalities bring to more than 270 the number of people killed in almost two months of Israeli-Palestinian violence. All but a handful of those killed have been Palestinian or Israeli Arabs.

U.S. defense chief in region

The tank attack on Wednesday came as Arafat held talks in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Arafat thanked the Egyptians for their decision on Tuesday to recall their ambassador to Israel, Mohammed Bassiouny.

Prime Minister Ali Abu-Ragheb of Jordan, the only other Arab country with diplomatic ties to Israel, announced on Tuesday that its new ambassador to Israel would not present his credentials "until Israel ends its attacks."

Following his meeting with Arafat, Mubarak met with U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen, who then traveled to Israel for talks with Barak.

"All lives are precious in the eyes of the United States," Cohen said in an interview on Egyptian television. "We want to see a stop to the violence on both sides."

He said he hoped Egypt would send its ambassador back to Tel Aviv as soon as possible.

The United States has urged Egypt to stay engaged with Israel, saying its help is needed to restore calm after eight weeks of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

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Arafat: 'Exerting every effort' to end violence
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U.S. pushes for diplomatic end to Mideast fighting
November 16, 2000
Israel closes borders with Palestinian-ruled areas after more deaths
November 13, 2000
U.S. names Mitchell to head Mideast fact-finding commission vessel
November 7, 2000

Palestinian National Authority
Israeli Government
United Nations
Egypt State Information Service
U.S. State Department

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