Big Israeli Force Heads Into Nablus in Reprisal Raid
Residents reported that the Israeli force included more than 100 tanks and armored vehicles — including bulldozers — and that troops had entered the maze of alleyways in the old heart of the city, known as the casbah. There were unconfirmed reports of two Palestinians killed in Nablus.

A member of Hamas, the militant Muslim group that took responsibility for the bombing at the university, was reported killed in Salem, a neighboring village. A neighbor told the Associated Press that the Hamas member, Amjad Jubur, 28, had been handcuffed and then shot by Israeli soldiers.

In an interview on Thursday in Gaza City, one political leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, expressed regret for the deaths of Americans. But he called the attack a success nonetheless and predicted more of the same.

Hamas said it had detonated the bomb in retaliation for Israel's killing last week of a top leader of the group. Fourteen other Palestinians, including nine children, died in the Israeli raid, on Gaza City.

The bombing of the university, a fenced and guarded campus, also left Israelis wondering what more they could do to protect themselves, since the Israeli Army has already seized seven of eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

Sadly accustomed to the unbiased way such terror attacks mete out death and injury, Israelis seemed more stunned that the university had been bombed than that Americans had died. Other Americans, generally with joint Israeli citizenship, have died in the 22-month conflict.

(Palistinian-Americans have died at Israeli hands as well -- A.I.)

The assault followed a suicide bombing on Tuesday that wounded five people in the first such attack here in more than a month, since Israel started its latest West Bank offensive in response to back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem that killed 26 people.

Early Thursday, an Israeli man was found, bound and shot to death, near the West Bank city of Tulkarm. The killing, which Israeli military officials described as a lynching, occurred in the Buds of Peace industrial zone, where Israeli businessmen employ Palestinian workers.

Overnight Thursday, Palestinians reported that Israeli soldiers had shot dead a 9-year-old girl near a settlement in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Army said it knew of no such incident. The army said its soldiers had exchanged fire with Palestinians in several areas of Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/international/middleeast/02MIDE.html