Three Palestinians were killed as more than 100 Israeli tanks swept into the West Bank city of Nablus this morning.
A fourth Palestinian died in an Israeli army operation in Hebron and an 85-year-old Palestinian woman was
killed by Israeli fire in the southern Gaza Strip.
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Israeli soldiers guard Palestinians who were arrested during an army operation in Nablus today Photograph: Reuters
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The Nablus incursion was launched two days after militants from the Islamic group Hamas detonated a bomb in a cafeteria at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, killing five Americans and two Israelis.
After vowing harsh retaliation against Hamas for carrying out the bombing, Israel sent columns of tanks deep into Palestinian-ruled Nablus, which had been surrounded and under strict curfew for weeks, witnesses said.
Under cover of darkness, Israeli troops were also deployed in the alleyways of Nablus's Old City, where the army fought Palestinian militants holed up there during a six-week Israeli offensive in the West Bank in April and May.
Palestinian security and hospital sources said Israeli forces killed a Hamas member in his home in a village on the outskirts of Nablus and shot dead two other Palestinian in the center of the city.
Dozens of people are understood to have been rounded up and arrested.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, the Israeli army blew up the home of a Palestinian gunman who killed two Israelis in Jerusalem last November before police shot him dead. Relatives of the militant said 50 people were made homeless.
In Tulkarm, also in the West Bank, Israeli forces destroyed a house belonging to the family of a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed three people in the central Israeli city of Netanya in March 2001, the military said.
The Palestinian Authority warned today that stepped up military action by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could lead to a new explosion of violence.
"The assassinations, the demolition of houses and the policy of expulsions can only lead to more violence", Mr Nabil Abu Rudeina, a top adviser to Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat, said. "The Israeli government is fully responsible for this serious escalation and crimes against Palestinian civilians," he added.
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The bodies of two of the Americans were being flown home today as the FBI launched an investigation into the attack, which drew words of outrage from President George W. Bush.
"I'm just as angry as Israel is right now," Mr Bush said in Washington yesterday. "I'm furious that innocent life was lost. However, through my fury, even though I am mad, I still believe peace is possible."
Mr Bush gave no indication the United States would retaliate against Hamas. But a Hamas leader was quick to deny his group had deliberately targeted US citizens.