Israel made a deadly incursion into an autonomous Palestinian sector of the West Bank on Thursday night after a fierce gun battle, casting a pall on impending German-brokered truce talks.
Two Palestinians were killed in the incursion, Palestinian security sources said, as some 15 Israeli tanks and armor vehicles stormed the Abu Snena district of the divided city of Hebron, which has been a violence flashpoint.
Bulldozers also demolished several buildings, witnesses told AFP.
The incursion was called after a gun battle between Palestinians in Abu Snena and Israeli troops guarding a nearby Jewish settlement, sparked by the sniper shooting and serious wounding of two Israeli settlers in the city, according to Israeli sources quoted in The Jerusalem Post.
The Israeli also demolished two houses allegedly used by the Palestinian fighters who were engaged in the battle to defend the area, said other reports.
Around 400 Jewish settlers live under heavy army protection in the center of Hebron, surrounded by a Palestinian population of some 120,000.
An Israeli army spokesman said at about 1:00 am (2200 GMT) that the incursion had ended and troops were withdrawing from the area.
Israeli troops also earlier shot dead 11-year-old Palestinian Mohammad Jaber Zorob and injured 10 others when a crowd of youths stoned an Israeli army position in the southern Gaza Strip, reported the agency.
Medical officials said two of the injured were in serious condition.
The flare-up in violence came during an day in which Israel botched its second attempt to kill a Palestinian militant in less than 24 hours.
Israeli forces fired rockets at Palestinian police Colonel Jihad Al-Masimi in the West Bank town of Nablus, slightly wounding the officer, as well as his driver and a passer-by.
Five Palestinians were wounded on Thursday while resisting an Israeli armored attack on the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Deir Al Balah. Earlier, yet another Israeli assassination attempt failed when the target escaped with light wounds.
Three Israeli tanks entered the Palestinian refugee camp of Deir Al Balah in the center of the Gaza Strip Thursday, provoking firefights which left four Palestinian police wounded, Palestinian security officials told AFP. However, Al Jazeera satellite channel said five were wounded.
The tanks, accompanied by a number of army jeeps, rolled around 800 meters (2,500 feet) into Palestinian-controlled territory, running into automatic rifle fire from Palestinian resistance fighters, the officials said.
In a separate incident at the nearby El Breij refugee camp, Israeli tanks blasted a Palestinian security post, although there were no immediate reports of injuries, said AFP, adding that the strikes appeared to be retaliation for three Palestinian mortar shells which landed in the same area, without causing any injuries.
ISRAELI ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT FAILS
Earlier in the day, the chief of police in Nablus escaped a missile attack on his car with only light wounds. A similar attack had failed in Gaza hours before.
Col. Jihad Al Masimi, 46, his driver and a passer-by were wounded in the failed hit in the Balata refugee camp in south Nablus, which came hours after another Israeli "targeted killing" failed in Gaza.
The attack was carried by Apache helicopters which fired three surface-to-surface missiles, Palestinians told TV reporters.
Senior foreign ministry official Oded Iran told AFP that Masimi was the target of the army strike because he was involved in several terror activities in the Nablus area and was planning further attacks.
Palestinian officials say that over 40 political leaders and resistance fighters have been killed under Israel's assassination policy, variously called by the euphemisms "targeted killings," "liquidations," "surgical strikes," and "interception operations."
ARMY TO PROBE FAILURE TO WIPE OUT HAMAS LEADERS
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer has ordered a probe of the occupation army's failure to eradicate Hamas military leaders in the Gaza Strip, including Mohammad Deif, who is believed to be the Gaza head of the group's Ezzeddin Al Qasam Brigades, reported the Israeli media on Thursday.
The other leader mentioned in the reports was Adnan Al Ghul, reportedly the most senior wanted Palestinian who Israel has targeted so far.
Haaretz reported that a debriefing would be held Thursday in the offices Ben Eliezer in an effort to ascertain why Israeli assassination attempts had failed.
The Israeli press called the failed operation against Ghul "the big miss," since Deif and Ghul top Israel's wanted list for "terrorists."
The minister was later quoted as defending the near-hits. The Jerusalem Post said that the Israeli defense establishment is unconcerned that it had twice in two days missed killing key “terrorists.”
In the missile attack near Gaza City, Palestinian security officials said Israel's US-made Apache attack helicopters fired at two cars carrying Deif, Ghul and his son, Bilal, 22, according to AFP.
Palestinian sources confirmed that Ghul was one of Hamas' most senior bomb-makers, while his son belonged to the Popular Resistance Committees, which coordinate the armed activities of diverse anti-Israeli resistance groups.
The Israeli army said in a statement that the helicopters fired on the cars because their occupants were "engaged in mortar bombings."
TOLL OF PALESTINIAN WOUNDED, KILLED CONTINUES TO RISE
Meanwhile, Israeli troops pounded positions in the Gaza Strip and killed a Palestinian policeman, after earlier shootings ended in the deaths of four Palestinians near Nablus in the West Bank, said the agency.
Al Jazeera also reported that a Palestinian fighter was shot dead near the Egyptian border in Rafah on Wednesday, without identifying him.
The bloody incidents came just hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat agreed to hold talks on ending the latest uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insisted there would be no moves on the internationally backed Mitchell peace plan until Palestinian attacks were halted for at least a week.
"We have not given up on this test period of seven days, which was agreed with US Secretary of State Colin Powell," Sharon said after meeting Fischer, who wrapped up a three-day mission to revive the moribund peace process.
Fischer said the plan - which calls for a truce, a six-week cooling-off period, a freeze on Israeli settlement-building and an eventual return to peace talks - should be carried out.
Fischer on Tuesday engineered a meeting between Peres and Arafat to discuss a phased ceasefire, although no date has been set for the talks.
Arafat and Peres will have a limited briefing when they hold their planned meeting, the German Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
"This is a case of a very restricted mandate on both sides, namely to reduce the violence and improve the Palestinians' situation," the foreign ministry said.
Senior US officials later expressed doubt whether the German-brokered meeting between Arafat and Peres would be held, but France and Russia applauded the news of the planned meeting as a way to end the bloodshed.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Palestinian police Ghazi Jabali said one of his officers, Mahmoud Jasser, 23, was shot dead in Rafah near the Egyptian border while inspecting a house that the Israeli army had recently left.
Jabali said the Israeli forces had planted a bomb in the house and Jasser was inspecting it when he was shot in the chest.
In a statement, Israel's army later said an armed man had been spotted advancing in a "suspect manner" and that a unit opened fire in his direction.
Meanwhile, four Israeli soldiers and three civilians were injured overnight in separate incidents with Palestinians in the West Bank, a military source was quoted by AFP as saying Thursday.
Three soldiers and an officer received light wounds in exchanges of automatic weapons fire near Tulkarem in the north on Thursday morning.
Three civilians, two adults and a child, were injured by stones late Wednesday as they drove outside the village of Houssan near the southern town of Bethlehem.
Four other Palestinians were shot dead and their bodies mutilated with axes near Nablus early Wednesday, in clashes that erupted when an elite Israeli unit surprised a group of Palestinian activists about to plant a bomb close to a Jewish settlement, the Israeli army said.
However, Mahmoud Al Alul, the governor of Palestinian-run Nablus, told Palestinian radio a gunbattle broke out after the men tried to rescue a Palestinian who had been wounded overnight.
The bullet-riddled bodies of 22-year-old Hakkam Tayeh, 25-year-old Faadi Samaana and Zaher Ismail, 30, were found near Nablus in the early morning.
The body of the fourth victim, 23-year-old Ahmad Fares, was taken away by the Israelis, an official from Arafat's Fateh movement said.
Around 10,000 people gathered in Nablus for the funerals of the four, chanting revenge and waving the flags of armed resistance groups.
"The Israelis must understand we don't want settlements," a Fateh member shouted through a loudspeaker, reported AFP.
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 563 Palestinians, and 146 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel's wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September - Albawaba.com
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