Palestinian gunmen entered a Palestinian courthouse posing as police today and shot dead three men who had just been found guilty of killing a security officer, witnesses said.
They said about 15 gunmen, one dressed in a policeman's uniform and the others pretending to be plainclothes officers, took custody of the prisoners on the pretext they were taking them back to their prison cells in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The gunmen instead took the three to a courthouse bathroom where they shot them dead before fleeing, witnesses and security sources said.
At the time, real policemen were fending off hundreds of angry protesters - friends and relatives of the slain security man - who were trying to storm the building in Palestinian-ruled Jenin, witnesses said. Some in the crowd fired automatic rifles in the air.
The three men killed had been convicted in a military court of killing Osama Kmeil, a Palestinian security officer involved in years past in the killing of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel.
The killing of Mr Kmeil and today's courthouse shooting appeared to be part of a cycle of revenge killings carried out by relatives of the dead.
The courthouse shooting occurred shortly after two of the three were sentenced to death and the third to 15 years hard labour for Mr Kmeil's killing last week.