Three Israeli soldiers were killed and another was wounded in a firefight early Sunday with the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, the Israeli army spokesman announced.
General Yitzhak Eytan, commander of the Central Israel military region which covers the West Bank, told reporters earlier that the Israeli army had sustained unspecified losses in the overnight clash in a West Bank Palestinian village.
The Israeli army does not report deaths until families have been told.
Eytan, speaking at the Katumin army command post, said Israeli soldiers had "wounded and captured a Hamas terrorist, while a second terrorist Mahmoud Abu Hannoud, considered one of the top Hamas leaders, was also wounded and fled to the autonomous sector of Nablus (northern West Bank) where he was arrested by Palestinian police."
The activist is suspected of having taken part in a 1997 attack on the west Jerusalem central market which claimed 17 lives -- the two Palestinian attackers and 15 Israelis.
Israeli radio said Hannoud had been slightly injured in the hand and gave himself up to Palestinian police, who treated him and then cordoned off Nablus.
Right-wing Likud MP Gidon Ezra, former number two in the internal security service Shin Beth, told Israeli radio: "It is unlikely that the Palestinians will extradite him to Israel."
Interim Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, who also holds the internal security portfolio, told the radio: "I don't know if we are going to request his extradition. What's important is that the Palestinian Authority fights against terrorism."
Eytan did not say whether any Hamas militiamen had been killed.
He said that during a search operation the Israeli troops had arrived in front of a house where they thought they had spotted suspects.
The latter were indeed there and opened fire, hitting several soldiers.
The two-storey house was in the Palestinian village of Assira al Shamaliyah, two kilometers (a mile) north of Nablus.
Eytan added that it was possible that an Israeli soldier was hit by shots fired by his comrades during the shootout.
The general told Israeli radio: "Hamas has never stopped trying to carry out anti-Israeli attacks. Only the efforts of the Israeli army and security services and those of the Palestinian police will prevent it."
The radio said the army operation was continuing Sunday morning in Assira al Shamaliyah.
Inhabitants had earlier told AFP of heavy gunfire overnight between Israeli forces and militiamen.
Ambulances were sent to the scene after the shootout while the village was sealed off by Israeli forces, they said.
The village, said to be a stronghold of Hamas, is a few kilometers (miles) north of the Palestinian autonomous enclave of Nablus in a zone that is under Palestinian administration but Israeli security control.
Hamas, violently opposed to the peace process with Israel and the 1993 autonomy accords concluded by the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been behind most of the anti-Israeli attacks carried out since then.
Its two most recent suicide attacks in 1997 cost the lives of 24 people in west Jerusalem, including five attackers -- OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
