Arab Rakes Israeli Yeshiva With Gunfire; 3 Students Die
A Palestinian gunman assaulted an Israeli settlement near Nablus late tonight, killing three young yeshiva students before being shot and killed.

The attack followed five suicide bombings in less than a week, and a road ambush earlier tonight north of Ramallah in which an Israeli was killed. The assaults compounded the evidence that the major Israeli military offensive last month had done little to blunt the Palestinian attacks.

Jerusalem was tense this evening after the authorities announced that they had specific intelligence that a bomber was coming from the Ramallah area. But intelligence reports failed to stop the suicide bomber who struck on Monday at an outdoor mall in Petah Tikva, just outside Tel Aviv, killing a 56-year-old grandmother, Ruth Peled, and her 15-month-old granddaughter, Sinai Keinan.

The bomber was identified as Jihad Titi, 17, the cousin of Mahmoud Titi, a leader of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade who was killed last week with three associates by a tank shell in the Balata refugee cemetery.

Neighbors gathered in Balata to offer both condolences and congratulations to the suicide bomber's family. His father, Ibrahim Titi, said he wished his son had been carrying a nuclear bomb.

But there were signs of a split among the Palestinians, an emerging power struggle between the old guard surrounding Yasir Arafat and the emerging "insiders," who grew up here under the first armed uprising more than a decade ago.

The official Palestinian leadership issued a statement condemning the bombing on Monday, saying it gave "the Israeli occupation army excuses to continue its aggression, killing people and destroying our national goal." The commander of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, an Arafat loyalist, Brig. Gen. Amin al-Hindi, added, "The murder of Israeli civilians is a big mistake."

But Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, which was born in the Balata camp as an armed response to an Israeli settler's slaying of a Palestinian villager, said in a statement, "We will not stop our operations as long as the occupation continues on our land." The statement, faxed to news organizations here, did not bear the usual seal of Mr. Arafat's Fatah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/29/international/middleeast/29MIDE.html