Israeli troops, backed by some 150 tanks, moved into the center of the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, killing at least three Palestinians. The Israeli army said it was launching a mission to root out a "local terror network."
Israeli troops exchanged fire with Palestinian fighters as they assaulted their main target, the Casbah, or Old City. "Our objective is to eliminate the local terror network, especially the bomb factories we believe exist there," a senior Israeli commander said as the raid began under cover of darkness.
Israel's Army Radio reported that security sources believed the bomb planted at Hebrew University on Wednesday was assembled at an underground munitions workshop in Nablus.
The commander estimated that several dozen armed Palestinians -- whom he described as "a new generation of terrorists" -- operated out of the Casbah and said it would take several days to flush them out.
According to Reuters, Palestinian security and medical sources said Israeli troops killed a Hamas member in his home in a village on the outskirts of Nablus. A resident in the nearby village of Salem said Israeli soldiers surrounded the house of a Hamas activist, Amjad Jubur, 28, and shot him dead after they had handcuffed his hands behind his back. Soldiers shot dead two other Palestinians - Raed el-Amad and Naaman Zalum - in the Casbah area.
At least 50 Palestinians were arrested.
Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called the Israeli operation "a new massacre." "I need an answer from the whole United Nations: is this acceptable?" he said.
In response to the Nablus incursion, Arafat said: "I am asking for quick international intervention from the United Nations. If they are not able to send forces, then send observers."
In Hebron, Israeli forces blew up a three-story house belonging to the family of a Palestinian who carried out an attack in Jerusalem last November, the military said, and in Tulkarem, soldiers destroyed the house of a Hamas gunmen who opened fire in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya in March 2001, killing three, the military said.
Elsewhere, several tanks stormed into the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday, and a Palestinian man was killed and two wounded by Israeli gunfire, Palestinian security sources said. Israeli armored vehicles knocked down three buildings, they said, and ordered families to leave other structures.
Late on Thursday, soldiers guarding a Jewish settlement in the central Gaza Strip shot dead a nine-year-old Palestinian girl, Palestinian security sources said. The Israeli army said troops in the area shot back after Palestinians fired on them. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
