Israel's military on Saturday killed eight Palestinians, including three security force members, during a third straight day of incursions in the West Bank.
During attacks on Bethlehem, four Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, after three people were killed Friday when tanks first rolled into the self-rule Palestinian city and the famed birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Israeli helicopter gunships fired two missiles at a building where Palestinian snipers were stationed and wounded 10 people, joining forces with tanks stationed in the center of Bethlehem.
Israeli gunfire killed 19-year-old Johnny Thalgia near the Church of the Nativity late Saturday afternoon.
A spray of bullets killed a 48-year-old woman, Aysha Abu Uda, at her home in the Ayda refugee camp on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem, hospital sources said.
Israeli tank fire also killed 17-year-old Yusef Abayat in the southeastern part of town, witnesses said.
An Israeli army statement said Abayat had approached an Israeli outpost and stabbed an Israeli soldier, wounding him lightly, before the tank fired.
Rania Kharufa, 23, was killed by shrapnel from a tank shell which exploded near her house in neighboring Beit Jala, the sources said.
Thirteen Palestinians, including three policemen and a doctor, were wounded in the area.
Meanwhile, two Israeli soldiers were shot and wounded by Palestinian gunmen at Bethlehem's Tomb of Rachel, army spokespeople said.
The Israeli incursions followed last Wednesday, after the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Revahem Zeevi in an east Jerusalem hotel by a radical Palestinian group.
A Palestinian Health Ministry statement said that through Saturday morning, 14 people had been killed and 184 wounded, eight of them seriously, since Israel mounted its revenge strikes nearly three days ago.
Israeli troops also killed Saturday two members of the Palestinian security forces in the autonomous Palestinian town of Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said.
They were named as Mustapha Zetani, 53 and Maher Abu Hassan, 33.
The pair were killed during a heavy exchange of fire between Israeli and Palestinian forces, the sources said, as Israeli armor rolled into the town.
Another member of the security forces was said to have been seriously wounded in the exchange.
An army spokesman said two Israeli soldiers were also wounded in the clashes.
Meanwhile a 37-year-old Palestinian civilian and a 20-year-old Palestinian policemen, Samir Shawahida, were killed as more troops penetrated Qalqiliya, another Palestinian-controlled town in the northern West Bank.
The troops also arrested seven people, including two members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 bodyguard corps, the sources said.
The Israeli fire left three other Palestinians wounded, and a Palestinian security position destroyed, they added.
One of the men arrested was a would-be suicide bomber, the head of the Israeli forces in the West Bank, General Gershon Yitzhak, alleged at a press conference late Saturday.
An army statement said Israel had "killed or arrested" some 20 Palestinian "terrorists" in army ground operations in autonomous Palestinian territory in the West Bank since Thursday.
"During operations which took place under intense Palestinian fire, a certain number of soldiers were injured, and some 20 terrorists, from Hamas and the Tanzim were killed or arrested," it said without elaborating.
Tanzim is Israel's term for armed groups linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh movement.
The army also confirmed it had "encircled Tulkarem and Qalqiliya, and took possession of the headquarters of the Palestinian security forces in the latter place."
The army also destroyed "positions from which firing had taken place recently against Israeli targets," the statement said.
Elsewhere, Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian security officer in the head during an exchange of fire in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which Israeli troops had entered Thursday, hospital sources said.
They listed him in critical condition.
Meanwhile, Palestinians launched grenades at tanks station in the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, an army spokeswoman said. No injuries were reported.
The latest killings brought the death toll for the year-old Intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, to 899 people, including 699 Palestinians and 178 Israelis -- BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AFP)
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