Three Palestinians were killed as the Israeli army poured troops into the crowded alleys of Nablus's Old City yesterday, arresting dozens in what officials said was an assault on the Hamas stronghold allegedly responsible for a spate of attacks on Israelis, from David Horovitz, in Jerusalem.
In Gaza, where two more Palestinians were reported killed, a Hamas leader acknowledged that his wife had prevented their son from becoming a suicide-bomber. The admission prompted allegations from Palestinian Authority officials that the Hamas "establishment" was sending youngsters to their deaths while ensuring its own families were not involved.
The Israeli offensive in Nablus marked the first time since April that troops had entered the Old City. That earlier incursion saw heavy fighting. Yesterday, by contrast, the exchanges of gunfire were relatively mild. Nevertheless, two Palestinians were killed in the clashes, and a third man, a known Hamas activist, was killed in a village outside the city - shot when already captured by troops, said a neighbour; killed when trying to escape, said the army.
A fourth Palestinian man was killed in Rafah, at the south of the Gaza Strip, where troops entered PA-controlled territory to destroy buildings from which they said missiles had been fired. A fifth Palestinian, an elderly woman, was said by her son to have died after being hit by Israeli gunfire on the Gaza-Israel border. The Israeli army said it was investigating.
Troops searched houses in Nablus for Hamas operatives, made numerous arrests and said they discovered two explosives factories. The army said later that two people arrested yesterday in Nablus and Jenin had been planning suicide bombings.
Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Defence Minister, said Nablus had become the new "centre of terrorism". Stepping up policies aimed at deterring future bombers, the Israeli army also demolished two homes in Nablus, and one each in Hebron and Tulkarm, of families of suicide-bombers and gunmen. It also moved to exile, from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, two relatives of past attackers.
PA President Mr Yasser Arafat appealed to the UN and the international community for intervention. Mr Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, urged Israel not to proceed with the exiling, which he indicated breached international law. The Israeli security services claim that two suicide-bombers turned themselves in recently because of fears that their families would be made homeless if they went ahead with their bombings, and that a third bomber was thwarted when his father, similarly fearful, informed on him.
As the bodies of American victims of Wednesday's Hamas bombing at Jerusalem's Hebrew University were flown home, the Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Mr Abdel Aziz Rantisi, issued an apology of sorts for some of their deaths, saying he regretted the killings of "pure" Americans, but not of those who held dual American-Israeli citizenship.
Mr Rantisi also acknowledged the veracity of a much-publicised transcript of a phone conversation between his wife and a Hamas recruiter, in which she refuses to let her son Mohammad become a suicide-bomber. "With Allah's help, you will soon hear news of Mohammed that will bring you joy," the caller tells her. She responds, however, that he is deep in his studies, and is her only son.
When the caller persists, and identifies himself as a disciple of the assassinated Hamas bomb-maker Yihya Ayash, Mrs Rantisi says she wants nothing to do with Ayash's disciples and hangs up. Mr Rantisi claimed the call had taken place several years ago, when his son, now 20, was still at high school. Sources at the PA, who intercepted and recorded it, said it was taped only months ago and that it showed the hypocrisy of the Hamas "nobility".