At least five people were killed and three others wounded last night when a suspected Palestinian gunman entered a kibbutz near the West Bank and opened fire.
The attack came hours after two men in a car blew themselves up when police officers stopped them at a nearby checkpoint.
The military said it had also detained a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on his way to kill Israelis, and arrested a senior member of Hamas in Hebron who was planning another suicide attack.
Early this morning Israeli helicopter gunships fired at least eight missiles at buildings in Gaza city. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The two Palestinians who blew themselves up in the car had been waved down by the police near Kibbutz Metzer, on the Israeli side of the green line. The police said one of the men was carrying an explosive belt, and he either detonated it to avoid arrest or it went off prematurely. The police say there was a second bomb in the car.
The military declined to discuss the circumstances of the arrest of the 15-year-old boy in Nablus, other than to say that it is certain he was about to carry out a suicide attack in Israel. If true, he would be one of the youngest suicide bombers so far.
The attacks came the day after the Israeli army killed the head of Islamic Jihad in Jenin, Iyad Sawalhe, who was held responsible for two of the worst suicide bombings this year.
The Israelis say Sawalhe oversaw similar attacks at the Karkur and Megido junctions, in which vehicles packed with explosives rammed buses, killing a total of 31 people and injuring dozens more.
Sawalhe was shot after a gun battle with Israeli troops who found him hiding behind a revolving wall in his kitchen. The army said he resisted arrest by throwing hand grenades.
The army also arrested about 200 Palestinians and destroyed the homes of 10 alleged terrorists or their families, before pulling back to the outskirts of Jenin yesterday.
Islamic Jihad said it killed an Israeli soldier — Sergeant-Major Madin Grifat (23) who was shot near Gaza — in revenge for Sawalhe’s death. The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, said Sawalhe’s killing was ”another crime in a series of Israeli crimes”.
The army has tightened security along parts of the green line in recent days in response to what it says is intelligence information about plans for a new spate of bombings.
Arafat’s Fatah faction was meeting with Hamas in Cairo yesterday in an attempt to secure an end to attacks inside Israel, at least during the general election campaign, for fear of playing into the hands of the Israeli far right.
The Palestinian leadership has made it clear that it would like a victory for the Labour party, which Arafat calls his ”partner in peace”.
That appears an unlikely prospect right now, but the left — with its proposals for immediate talks with the Palestinians without preconditions — is gaining strength inside the Labour party.
The Cairo talks are expected to last several days, and also aim to provide a broader vision to carry the intifada forward. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001