WORLD IN BRIEF
Sunday, April 22, 2007; Page A21
At Least 6 Palestinians Killed in Israeli Strikes
GAZA CITY -- Israeli forces killed at least six Palestinians on Saturday, including one in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip, in the worst flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in months.
The Israeli army said the airstrike, only the second in Gaza since a November truce, targeted fighters who had fired makeshift rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot, hitting a house.
A top aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the Israeli actions jeopardized Abbas's efforts to expand the fragile truce from Gaza to the occupied West Bank as part of a U.S.-led peace push.
In the deadliest incident, an Israeli undercover unit killed three armed fighters while they were driving in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, local Palestinian security sources said.
In a village near Jenin, a Palestinian policeman was shot and killed by Israeli forces, Palestinian witnesses said.
They said the policeman had not been involved in any fighting in the area and was shot when he peered out his window. The Israeli army said its troops "noticed an armed militant firing from the top of a building and identified hitting him."
Later in the day, a 17-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead by Israeli troops as she stood at her window in Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian medical workers said.
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EUROPE
· MOSCOW -- Russia's Interior Ministry insisted that riot police had acted lawfully when they broke up opposition rallies and accused protesters of faking injuries.
Police wielding batons beat, kicked and chased anti-Kremlin protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg last weekend, drawing sharp rebukes from Western governments and human rights groups.
Former chess champion turned opposition leader Garry Kasparov was detained, along with his supporters and a number of journalists and photographers. Most were released within hours.
"The protesters violated the federal law with their actions, and the police were not simply forced, they were obliged by the law, to intervene," the ministry's head of public relations told a news conference.
