Five Palestinians shot dead in Israeli incursion

The men died amid heavy shooting in the Balata refugee camp after more than 30 Israeli army jeeps and four bulldozers piled into the area adjoining the flashpoint city of Nablus.

Three of those killed were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a radical faction loosely affiliated to Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party. They had exchanged fire with Israeli troops while holed up in a house.

Medical sources named the dead men as 32-year-old Hamudeh Shtewi, Mohammed al-Surakji, 20, and Mohammed Abu Khamis, 32.

Two other Palestinians, one of them a teenager, were killed earlier in what was the second deadly Israeli military operation in the area since Sunday.

Naim Abu Saris, 22, was fatally shot while on the roof of his house, while 19-year-old Ibrahim Saidi died from bullets in the abdomen as troops targeted a group of strong-throwing youths.

An Israeli army spokeswoman told AFP that the three Al-Aqsa militants had opened fire on soldiers who had come to arrest them.

"The IDF (army) had come to arrest several wanted Palestinians inside a house. Several gunmen opened fire at them. One soldier was moderately-severely wounded," she said on Thursday.

"The force returned fire at three gunmen in the house and identified hitting them," she added, confirming that the wounded Israeli soldier had been airlifted to hospital.

Six other Palestinians were wounded, including one seriously. A US peace activist was also shot in her hand, medical sources said.

Witnesses said that troops had opened fire on Palestinian rescue workers and towards foreign peace activists, wounding an ambulance driver and a nurse.

The Israeli military imposed a curfew and blocked all entrances to the camp while soldiers took up positions on surrounding buildings.

An Israeli spokeswoman said that the army was investigating claims that soldiers at the scene had shot at ambulances.

Three Palestinians were killed and around 300 wounded in an Israeli army operation in Nablus which ended on Tuesday.

Thursday's deaths brought the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the intifada to 4,965, more than three-quarters of the dead being Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

It also marked the deadliest day of violence in the Palestinian territories since the militant Hamas's victory in a January 25 election.

Outgoing Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei strongly condemned the Balata incursion.

"We condemn this Israeli escalation in the Palestinian territories, the assassinations, arrests and continued building of the (separation) wall and settlements," he told the Palestinian cabinet meeting in Ramallah.

In Gaza City, a spokesman for Hamas, which is preparing to form the next government, condemned the "horrifying" Israeli operation which he said "cannot be suffered in silence".

"The Israeli occupier holds entire responsibility for this aggression which amounts to a veritable war crime," Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

"We urge the international community to live up to its responsibilities and stop this massacre instead of asking our people to stop resisting."

In the central West Bank, 10 demonstrators were also wounded by rubber bullets fired by Israeli troops in skirmishes with Palestinian villagers protesting against the building of Israel's controversial separation barrier.

Around 150 villagers were trying to prevent two bulldozers from operating in the village of Beit Sira, close to Ramallah.

Two pro-Palestinian Israeli militants were arrested by soldiers during the protest, witnesses said.

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