Agencies  --  Arab News

JERUSALEM, 20 June 2004 — Three British MPs said yesterday that Israeli troops had fired at them twice during a visit to the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah a day earlier, a spokesman for the British Consulate said.

“The MPs said they were fired at (by Israeli troops) while inside a United Nations car in Rafah and also when they got out of the car,” he said.

“They are still in the country and we will take this incident up with the Israeli authorities.” An Israeli Army spokesman said the military was looking into the report.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the incident was being checked. “We were not aware that these British MPs were in Rafah because it wasn’t officially coordinated through us,” she said.

“We have spoken with the British Embassy and are checking with the army what actually happened.”

The consulate spokesman did not name the MPs, but a report on the BBC website identified them as Huw Irranca-Davies from the ruling Labour party, Crispin Blunt from the opposition Conservatives and the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Northover.

He said the Israeli authorities were well aware that the cross-party group was on a working visit to the area, which was the scene of a massive army offensive last month, during which more than 40 Palestinians were killed.

Israeli soldiers have been accused of firing at UN convoys and foreign diplomats touring flashpoint areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip several times since a Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.

Meanwhile, Israeli helicopter gunships struck two metal foundries late Friday, injuring four passers-by hours after Palestinian fighters fired rockets at an Israeli town.

An army spokesman confirmed the attack, saying Israel had destroyed “two weapon workshops that were a part of the weapons production industry in the Gaza Strip,” which he said fighters had used to manufacture rockets to launch at Israeli targets.

Palestinian witnesses said ambulances raced to the scenes shortly after Israel’s air raid, which came hours after Gaza fighters fired a Qassam-type rocket in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, causing slight damage but no casualties.

The army said the foundries were used by Palestinian groups such as Hamas to produce Qassam rockets and other munitions.

In another development, a jailed Palestinian member of the Islamic Jihad group escaped early yesterday from an Israeli prison near the northern West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli military sources said.

Roadblocks were erected in an effort to capture the fugitive, but Israeli radio said he had probably managed to reach Ramallah.

About 50 military jeeps rolled into the Askar refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Nablus and imposed a curfew, said witnesses and Palestinian security sources. Troops also searched the home of a Palestinian police officer arrested the previous day and detained two of his brothers, said witnesses.

One homemade rocket exploded in Israel and another close to a Jewish settlement in northern Gaza, said military sources.