Three Palestinian militants were killed in an explosion outside Bethlehem last night and three more Palestinians, including a schoolgirl, were killed by Israeli troops elsewhere in the West Bank, as Israel stepped up its military response to Wednesday's assassination of the Minister of Tourism, Mr Rehavam Ze'evi.
As darkness fell, an Israeli woman was killed and two more Israelis were wounded by Palestinian gunfire in the Jericho area, and Palestinian gunmen launched the first shooting attacks in weeks on the Gilo neighbourhood at Jerusalem's disputed southern edge.
Despite flurries of phone calls from Washington and European capitals to both Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, all signs now point to a drastic escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with potentially disastrous consequences for American efforts to retain Arab support for the anti-terror coalition. The US is urging Mr Arafat to arrest Mr Ze'evi's killers and "other known terrorists", while pleading with Israel to refrain from actions that would deepen the violence.
But Mr Sharon now appears to be on the point of ordering a major assault on the PA itself after Mr Arafat rejected Israel's demand that it extradite the killers of Mr Ze'evi, the cabinet hardliner who was gunned down in a Jerusalem hotel on Wednesday morning.
"As far as I'm concerned," Mr Sharon is said to have told ministerial colleagues, "the era of Arafat is over". If there were no extraditions within seven days, he reportedly added, "we'll go to war against him". Nevertheless, aides to the prime minister dismissed Palestinian assertions that Israel was plotting to assassinate Mr Arafat.
Palestinian Authority officials said they had arrested 11 members of the "political leadership" of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and outlawed the organisation; many of its key members were said to have gone into hiding. The PFLP has stated that it killed Mr Ze'evi to avenge the killing of its leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, in an Israeli missile attack in August.
Israeli officials said they had given the PA the names of Mr Ze'evi's killers "and those who sent them"
Palestinian Authority sources denied. The Palestinian Information Minister, Yasser Abed-Rabbo, flatly ruled out extraditions. "We do not receive our orders or directions from Sharon," he said.
The explosion near Bethlehem last night destroyed a car being driven by Atef Abayat, who commanded gunmen from Mr Arafat's Fatah faction in the area, killing him and two colleagues.
Mr Abayet was alleged by Israel to have shot dead an Israeli woman in the West Bank last month, and was on a list of Intifada activists whom Israel had asked the PA to arrest. He had been taken into PA custody several times, but quickly released.
Israel initially denied responsibility for the blast, but Mr Sharon later reportedly told colleagues that Israel "did what we had to do". Fatah officials, vowing revenge, said Israeli agents had planted a bomb in the car, which Mr Abayet had just received.
Rihan Ward, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl, was killed when hit in the chest by a tank shell as Israeli forces moved into Palestinian-held territory in Jenin earlier yesterday. Israeli troops also shot dead two Palestinian security officials during exchanges of gunfire when entering parts of Palestinian-held Ramallah. The Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat accused Israel of using the Ze'evi killing as a pretext for trying to crush the Palestinian Authority.
At the state funeral for Mr Ze'evi, a 75-year-old former general who championed the "transfer" of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to neighbouring Arab states, speaker after speaker, from across the political spectrum, castigated Mr Arafat for allowing terrorist factions to flourish. The dead minister's son, Yiftah-Palmah Ze'evi, urged Mr Sharon to "avenge his death".