Bombing at U.S.-backed school in Gaza

JERUSALEM: About a dozen masked Palestinians bombed and set fire to the American International School in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City, before dawn on Saturday, school officials and Palestinian security officials said. The attack caused extensive damage, but no injuries.

The officials said that the attackers, believed to be Islamic extremists subscribing to the ideology of Al Qaeda, laid several explosive devices at the school. The principal's office and the cafeteria on the first floor of the two-story building were badly burned, and computers were stolen from the premises, the officials said.

The blast happened at around 5 a.m., on a day when the school would be closed for the weekend. Two night guards at the school said the militants tied their hands and initially kept them on the premises, before allowing them to move out of danger. According to one of the guards, Atef al-Beheisi, the masked men told him: "We are the organization of Al Qaeda in Palestine, and our swords will be directed at the throats of the infidels."

The second guard, who fearing for his safety asked not to be identified and who was at another entrance of the school, said the intruders identified themselves to him as being part of the "Army of Islam."

In recent months, a wave of bombings by people suspected of being Islamic radicals has been directed against Internet cafes, pharmacies, music stores and other recreational centers in the Gaza Strip. Last weekend, an explosion damaged a Christian bookstore in Gaza City.

The American International School in Gaza was established as a local private enterprise and opened shortly before the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000. It promotes American-style education and received $160,000 this year from the State Department to finance scholarships for needy students, according to Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman at the United States Consulate in Jerusalem.

She noted that other private Palestinian schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had received American financing through Usaid, but said that the State Department had maintained a direct relationship with the school in Gaza because the education it provides "is something we want to support."

The school, which charges $2,000 to $4,000 annually, is beyond the means of most Gazans. It is not profitable as a result, according to board members. Therefore, they said they had recently discussed the possibility of handing over the school to an international organization, like the Quaker Religious Society of Friends.

There are 150 students enrolled at the school, which has a teaching staff of 30, all local Palestinians. The last foreign staff members left about a year ago because of the deteriorating security situation there. The school's former Dutch principal and his Australian deputy were briefly kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen in December 2005, and in March 2006, two Australian teachers were abducted and later released unharmed.

Several hours after Saturday's attack, the current principal, Ribhi Salem, said, "I am still in a state of shock. How could any Palestinian think it is in the Palestinian interest to carry out such a barbaric act?"

Eyad Sarraj, a well-known psychiatrist in Gaza and the chairman of the board of the school, said, "This is a clear attack against our country. It is designed to make everybody afraid. This school offers a distinguished education, but they want the students to be illiterate. This is against Islam."

Though privately run, the school falls under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority Education Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas. The United States defines Hamas as a terrorist organization and refuses to deal with the Hamas ministers in the Palestinian unity government.

But the Palestinian deputy minister of education, Muhammad Abu Shkeir, said in a telephone interview from Gaza that his ministry "cooperates fully with the American School, as with all international institutions." Abu Shkeir, who was on his way to the school to see the damage, added that the principle, Salem, had attended a meeting on private education at the ministry on Wednesday.

Members of Hamas's Executive Force and the Palestinian Authority's Civil Defense forces were among the first to arrive on the scene after Saturday's attack, witnesses said. The Executive Force, a police militia of about 6,000 men, operates in parallel to the Palestinian Authority security forces largely loyal to Hamas's rival, Fatah.

Also early on Saturday, an Israeli army spokeswoman said that troops shot and killed a Palestinian man, Mohammed Said Abed, 22, in the West Bank village of Kufr Dan, near Jenin. The spokeswoman said that the Israeli forces were on a routine operation in the village when Palestinians threw an explosive device and repeatedly fired on the soldiers. The soldiers identified a man standing on the roof of a house "holding a long rifle," she said, and shot him. Palestinian officials said the man was a member of the Palestinian security forces.