Palestinians Kill 5 Israeli Settlers in Raid on a Home
A medic on the scene said the shooting was so intense it was impossible to evacuate the wounded.

Another witness, a neighbor named Yakov Heiman, said: "We heard screaming. We closed the house and then the army started to come. It was a terrible feeling."

[Early Friday morning, dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles entered Nablus from three directions, Palestinian witnesses and security officials told Reuters. Israeli soldiers announced over loudspeakers that a curfew had been imposed and troops sporadically opened fire, they said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or resistance.]

This is a grim nation, with funerals dominating television coverage and black mourning bands tied to the rear-view mirrors of commuter buses, so often the targets of choice for bombers.

The chief army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey, told Israeli Army Radio this afternoon that intelligence reports of Palestinian attackers on the loose were coming in "an unusual concentration, even by the standards of recent months."

In response, a limited call-up of army reservists was issued late Thursday afternoon; police training classes were canceled, to put more officers on the street, and hundreds of paramilitary border police officers were on high alert, trying to seal off Netanya and other seafront areas north of Tel Aviv. The army issued an order effectively barring Palestinian workers from any Israeli settlements; such workers do much of the construction and menial labor.

Palestinians and the dwindling Israeli left regard Mr. Sharon's new policy with dismay; Jewish settlers and the Israeli right, with satisfaction. Both sides see it as potentially a long-term reoccupation of the West Bank.

Whatever the internal differences, the Israeli Army moved swiftly on Thursday, expanding its bases in the West Bank from Jenin to Qalqilya, Tulkarm and Bethlehem and its nearby Dheisheh refugee camp. Arab men 18 to 50 were rounded up, blindfolded and taken in for questioning.

Because the army has declared its areas of operation "closed military zones" and has increasingly sealed off Palestinian areas with ditches and barbed wire, it was difficult to get a complete picture of events.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/21/international/middleeast/21MIDE.html