Israeli Forces Hit Palestinian Offices in Hebron in Effort to Dislodge Gunmen
Israeli troops pounded the Palestinian Authority offices in Hebron for a third day today, firing heavy machine guns and rockets from helicopters to dislodge 15 gunmen they said were holed up inside.

[An Israeli army bulldozer punched a hole in the side of the Palestinian headquarters building in Hebron on Friday, as the Israelis demanded the surrender of gunmen inside, The Associated Press reported.]

The seven Palestinian cities on the West Bank into which Israel has sent troops remained shut down for the fifth day, leaving about 700,000 Palestinians locked in their homes under round-the-clock curfews and more than a million others in surrounding villages cut off from food, medicine and commerce. Jericho is the only major city not taken over by the Israelis.

In the Balata refugee camp, near Nablus, two Palestinians were shot dead today in clashes with Israeli Army troops, and about 10 others were wounded, both sides reported. In Qalqilya there was gunfire from soldiers after Palestinians came out for a break in the curfew and Palestinians reported that a child was shot dead. The Israeli Army said it was investigating.

In Nablus itself, Israeli troops stormed a jail being used as a security headquarters and took about 20 Palestinians into custody, most of them members of the Palestinian Navy Police, which has its headquarters in the landlocked city.

At the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, armored bulldozers backed by Israeli troops entered the Rafah refugee camp and destroyed about 10 houses, Palestinians said.

In the course of the assault on Palestinian offices in Hebron — a fortresslike structure known as the Imara that was once used as a barracks by the British — about 120 people have surrendered.

The Israeli Army is still holding about 20 of those who surrendered, officials said, including one person they described as a senior Hezbollah leader from Lebanon who had slipped in to train Palestinians in guerrilla warfare and, presumably, bomb attacks.

Israeli prosecutors today charged a Lebanese-born Israeli, the 35-year-old son of a Jewish mother and a Shiite Muslim father, with being a spy for Hezbollah. Identified only as Nissim, he was accused of making maps of gas and electricity installations in the Tel Aviv area and of trying to obtain information from the army.

Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who is chairman of the Labor Party as well as an uneasy partner in Mr. Sharon's government, said in a statement today that he did not believe there was a military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/28/international/middleeast/28MIDE.html