Two international observers killed in West Bank

Workers move the body of one of the two international observers killed Tuesday in West Bank.

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Two international observers were killed and one was slightly wounded Tuesday when a Palestinian opened fire on their car in the West Bank, Israeli and international officials said.

The surviving witness told Israeli Radio the gunman was wearing a Palestinian police uniform and unloaded his "whole magazine," about 30 bullets, at the car.

The observers from the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, or TIPH, were traveling in a marked car on a road used mostly by Jewish settlers southwest of Halhoul, just north of Hebron, when it came under fire, the Israeli military said.

The military said the Palestinian gunfire also was directed at an army outpost and that soldiers returned fire. An initial investigation determined the observers were killed by Palestinian fire, the Israeli army said.

TIPH is an unarmed observer group composed of members from Denmark, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

Kim Zander, head of the TIPH staff division, said the two slain observers were identified as a woman from Switzerland and a man from Turkey; their names were not immediately released. The wounded man was from Turkey, he said.

Zander said officials were working to find out exactly what happened.

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Huseyin Ozaslah, the wounded Turk, spoke with Israeli Radio en route to the hospital and said he and his colleagues had just left Hebron when "we heard some shooting to our car."

He said they saw a "Palestinian standing in the middle of the road" wearing a Palestinian police uniform and brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle.

Ozaslah said he and his two colleagues shouted, "Don't shoot!" and said they were from the observer force.

"He didn't care. He kept on shooting toward us," Ozaslah said.

He said the gunman, about 25 to 30 years old, "finished his whole magazine," firing about 30 shots.

Zander, the TIPH official, said he could not confirm the account, saying only that an investigation was under way.

The observers' main task "is to monitor and report the effort to maintain normal life in the city of Hebron ... thus creating a feeling of security among the Palestinian residents of the city," according to a statement on its Web site.

Conditions and talks

That violence took place before Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat announced he would not attend the Beirut summit and came after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Israeli television that if Arafat called in Arabic for a cease-fire and issued an appeal for no violence, it would be easier for the Israeli Cabinet to allow him to travel to Beirut.

The summit, set to begin Wednesday in Beirut, was expected to focus on a Saudi peace plan that would exchange Arab recognition of Israel for an Israeli withdrawal to borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. (More on the summit)

Meanwhile, senior Palestinian security officials Tuesday met with U.S. Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni to discuss his compromise proposal on how to implement a truce plan.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told CNN the session was very constructive.

Yasser Arafat

Zinni's latest proposal on steps each side could take for implementing the cease-fire plan proposed last year by CIA Director George Tenet.

"It is an attempt to codify what the parties could do to get to a cease-fire," one administration official said.

"If one side does something, and the other side does something within the span of a security meeting, we can say we are into Tenet." (Tenet plan)

Proposal swaps arrests for withdrawal

Officially, the Palestinians said they were not far from an agreement, but Palestinian sources told CNN an agreement was still at least two to three days away.

Israel Radio also reported that Israel's extended Security Cabinet backed Zinni's proposal in principle but was seeking some clarification.

Administration officials said Zinni's ideas start with the Palestinian Authority president making a series of arrests of people inside his security services.

Israel would then withdraw from specific Palestinian-controlled areas it has reoccupied over the past few months. The exact areas of withdrawal were still being "haggled over," one administration official said.

Once the withdrawals were complete, Palestinian security forces would be expected to take control of the areas "to ensure they do not become future flash points" of violence," this official said.

Talks continued to be overshadowed by violence. Two Palestinians died near a shopping mall in Jerusalem when they detonated a car they were driving filled with explosives, police said. Police ordered the car to stop, but it continued before exploding in the western part of the city.