7 Palestinians killed in Israeli incidents

JERUSALEM – Seven Palestinians were killed in several incidents across the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Monday, while gunmen kidnapped a CNN television producer in Gaza City, according to Israeli and Palestinian security officials.

In addition, a Bedouin man, Mazhar Azzama, 42, and his year-old daughter, Islam, were killed when their car hit a piece of Israeli military ordnance, causing it to explode, on an artillery training base near the southern Israeli desert city of Dimona, Israeli military and medical officials said.

Relatives told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Azzama was in the area collecting scrap metal to sell. An Israeli military spokesman said he and his daughter were in a restricted military zone.

Near the Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a car carrying Mohammad Abu Nasira, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a loose-knit group of militants who have split from other armed Palestinian factions, according to Israeli and Palestinian security officials. Abu Nasira survived and fled the vehicle, but his bodyguard, Ali Shaer, was killed, Palestinian medical officials said. Several other Palestinians near the car were wounded

CNN reported that Riad Ali, a Jerusalem-based Arab producer and interpreter for the network, was kidnapped about 6:30 p.m. Monday when a car intercepted a taxi carrying a CNN crew in downtown Gaza City.

A man in his early twenties, dressed in civilian clothes, emerged from the car and pointed a revolver into the taxi and asked, “Which one of you is Riad?” CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman, who was in the vehicle with Ali and photographer Mary Rogers, said in an on-air account of the incident.

Several other men, some carrying rifles, surrounded the taxi, then “took Riad out of the car and drove away with him,” Wedeman reported.

He said CNN has “no information about Riad’s whereabouts” and no information about his captors.