Muslim Gunman Shot Dead in Jerusalem

The AFP works overtime on this story in an attempt to portray the Israelis as the bad guys. Notice every time an Israeli is mentioned it's usually prefaced by "ultra"; forget any mention of Muslims or Islamist extremists being portrayed as terrorists.

Palestinian killed in Jerusalem shooting

JERUSALEM (AFP) - A Palestinian man was shot dead in a gunfight with Israeli security guards from an ultra-nationalist Jewish association in the Old City of occupied east Jerusalem on Friday, police said.

It was the latest violent incident involving Jews and Arabs in the tense Arab sector of the city, whose fate is one of the thorniest issues at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Jerusalem police chief Aaron Franco said the Palestinian seized a pistol of one of the men not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the walled Old City, which also contains sites holy to Jews and Muslims.

He said the Palestinian shot and wounded the guard from the ultra-Orthodox Ateret Cohanim yeshiva, whose colleague then fired on the assailant and killed him.

Ten other people were wounded in the shooting, three of them seriously, according to Israel emergency services.

Witnesses said passers-by were hit by bullets from the guard's weapon but a police spokesman told AFP it was "too early to determine which shots caused the injuries."

He said that the slain Palestinian was aged about 18 but gave no further information about his identity.

Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it as part of its "eternal and indivisible" capital of the Jewish state.

However, its claims are not recognised by the international community and Palestinians hope to make the eastern half of the city, where 200,000 Palestinians live, the capital of their promised state.

Ateret Cohanim, founded in 1978, is one of several ultra-nationalist organisations which have bought land and homes from Palestinians through various means in order to place Jews in the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, including the Old City.

Tensions in the city often run high over the Temple Mount, the compound revered by Jews that is also known to Muslims as Haram a-Sharif and houses the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

In May, two Palestinian assailants were killed and four Israeli policemen shot and wounded in a gunfight near east Jerusalem in the Palestinian village of Sheikh Saad.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group loosely linked to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party, had claimed responsibility for the May attack.

The latest death brings to 5,811 the number of people killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence since the start of the intifada in late 2000, the large majority Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

Boo-hoo. Maybe the majority of dead Palestinians would still be alive if they weren't trying to kill Israelis.

Since it's Friday, expect plentyof seething and outrage from the holy Islamists after they leave the ammunition depots mosques today.