Palestinian woman has baby in cab after soldiers block movement

RAMALLAH (AFP) A Palestinian woman was forced to give birth in a taxi on Tuesday after Israeli troops forbade her from passing a checkpoint to reach the hospital, a day after the army sealed off main towns in the violence-ridden West Bank.

After going into labour, 27-year-old Taqrit Asuri and her husband Amin Sayed headed in a cab from the village of Al Ram to the nearest main hospital in Palestinian-controlled Ramallah in the West Bank, the husband told an AFP correspondent.

Ramallah, along with seven other West Bank Palestinian towns, was sealed off late Monday after four Israelis were killed in drive-by shootings by Palestinian resistance fighters.

The taxi reached the checkpoint outside Ramallah but was blocked by occupation soldiers, who insisted that no-one, not even a woman about to give birth, could get in or out of the town.

The woman's husband pleaded desperately with the troops for about 30 minutes, before ordering the taxi driver to try another remote road into the city.

The woman went into labour in the cab which then raced to the nearest Palestinian refugee camp hospital in Qalandia, where a doctor attended to the mother and a blood-covered baby boy, still tied by the umbilical cord.

The doctor, Rifat Hussein, told AFP that both mother and son were in relatively good health.