Two Arab gunmen and an Israeli soldier were killed on Tuesday in some of the bloodiest violence in years on the usually quiet Israel-Jordan border, the Israeli army said.
The fighting, during an ambush of an Israeli patrol and a search for the attackers at the River Jordan, underlined the absence of peace in the Holy Land, where Christmas was marked in a sombre mood after 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault amid simmering Palestinian anger over Israel's ban on President Yasser Arafat's annual Christmas pilgrimage to Bethlehem.
Describing the shooting attack about 15 km (nine miles) north of the West Bank, an Israeli army officer said the commander of the patrol and a tracker were shot and wounded in the initial gunfire near the border fence in a farming area.
"We got a search party together and went in there to flush out the terrorists," he told Israel radio.
A soldier was killed and two others were wounded in an ensuing battle, the army said, adding that the bodies of two "armed terrorists" were later found just inside Israel.
Security sources first reported that Israeli forces had entered Jordan in pursuit of the gunmen but later said troops crossed the frontier fence -- short of the actual border -- without leaving Israeli territory.
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.
While ambulances rushed in to evacuate the wounded, an Israeli helicopter gunship poured machinegun fire into a grove of trees where the gunmen were believed to have fled.
Jordanian Minister of State Saleh Qallab denied reports Israeli forces had crossed the border and said there was no proof the infiltrators had come from Jordan.
But a security source told Reuters in Amman that authorities have in recent months foiled scores of infiltration attempts by young Jordanians who sympathise with the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
"There has been a noticeable increase by misled young Jordanians who think they can liberate Palestine by crossing the River and shooting at Israelis," the source said.
The raid was one of the most serious incidents of bloodshed along the frontier in years.
The bloodiest attack since the 1994 peace treaty occurred in 1997 when a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls at the border.
In 1996, Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated from Jordan killed three Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
(China Daily December 26, 2001)
