Palestinians scale wall, die after chase

JERUSALEM – In a rare breach of Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, two heavily armed Palestinians scaled a 25-foot wall Saturday, opened fire on an army outpost and eluded capture for nearly a half-mile before soldiers tracked them down and killed them, Israeli officials said.

The incident was part of a surge of violent clashes along the Israel-Gaza border and in the West Bank that left 21 Palestinians dead during the week, one of the summer’s bloodiest. Four of the dead were noncombatants.

Shrouded by early morning fog, the infiltrators used a ladder to scale the concrete wall and a rope to climb down the Israeli side, said Maj. Tal Lev-Ram, an Israeli army spokesman.

Once across, the men exchanged fire with guards at an army post at the nearby Erez border crossing terminal and led infantry forces on a chase deeper into Israeli territory.

The Palestinians carried grenades and automatic weapons, the army spokesman said. After a clash near the town of Netiv Haasara, soldiers retrieved the militants’ bodies with a robotic crane in case they were rigged with explosives.

Three militant groups, the Popular Resistance Committees, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack in a joint statement. They said two militants died after a “long battle” and the fate of a third was unknown.