Troops enter Nablus

Associated Press And The Washington Post

NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli tanks entered the West Bank city of Nablus early today, witnesses said, surrounding a hotly contested Jewish shrine that Israel had abandoned one month after the current uprising began.

Palestinians said the Israeli invaders encountered heavy resistance and gunfire. Later in the morning, the tanks were reported leaving.

Hard-line Israelis have been clamoring for their government to retake Joseph’s Tomb ever since it was evacuated in October 2000 following a two-day pitched battle.

The incursion was the second in as many days. On Sunday, Israeli tanks, soldiers and armored personnel carriers entered another part of Nablus, seizing an apartment building overlooking the city. A military statement following Sunday’s two-hour operation said it was in response to several Palestinian attacks in the Nablus area.

Also on Sunday, in Beersheba, a pair of Palestinian gunmen sprang from their car and opened fire near the gates of one of Israel’s biggest military bases, killing two female soldiers and wounding four other people before being slain in a hail of return fire.

In response, Israeli F-16 warplanes on Sunday night dropped two bombs on a Palestinian security headquarters near Yasser Arafat’s compound in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli bombs blew out office windows of the U.N.’s special coordinator in the Middle East and slightly injured 18 people, including two U.N. employees, Palestinian officials said. Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. official, said in a statement that "Israel’s security needs will not be met by hitting civilian targets or by destroying the Palestinians’ ability to police and maintain order."

The militant Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, claimed responsibility for the assault, the first in Beersheba since the Palestinian uprising 16 months ago.

Sixty miles to the south, Palestinians fired two rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli farming communities; one of them gouged a 7-foot-deep hole in the ground. The Israeli army said they appeared to be the first use of a rocket known as the Qassam II, developed by Hamas.

The army says the 120mm Qassam II— named for Hamas’ military wing, Izzadin al-Qassam — has a range of five miles and can carry 20 pounds of explosives, enough to do considerable damage. Israeli officials have warned of a ferocious Israeli military response — "like something you’ve never seen before," said a senior army officer — if the rockets are fired into an Israeli city.

Hamas has said it was equipping itself with the homemade rockets to defend Palestinians from Israel’s army, which has attacked Palestinian cities with F-16 fighters, helicopter gunships and tanks, inflicting heavy casualties.

Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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