Palestinian gunmen killed eight suspected collaborators and Islamic leaders expressed fury at Israel's isolation of Yasser Arafat as Israeli forces tightened their siege of the Palestinian leader's office yesterday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has vowed an "uncompromising war" against terrorism, sent tanks and troops into the West Bank town of Qalqilya overnight in response to a wave of suicide bombings by defiant Palestinian militants.
Israel's four-day-old siege of Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah has provoked fury across the Arab world and a Jordanian official said Amman was considering expelling Israeli ambassador David Dadon in protest.
Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab countries to have signed peace treaties with Israel.
As tensions ran high, two masked Palestinian gunmen entered an intelligence building in the West Bank town of Tulkarm and killed eight prisoners suspected of collaborating with Israel, security sources and witnesses said.
Middle East envoys from the UN, the US, the EU and Russia were apparently blocked from seeing Arafat because of Sharon's policy of cutting him off from the outside world.
"The siege is still imposed around Arafat," Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said. "There are international envoys who planned to visit him but the Israelis are still preventing them from doing so."
Asked if this was the case, Ranaan Gissin, a top adviser to Sharon, said: "Yasser Arafat is in isolation and he is going to remain so until the end of the terrorist threat."
On Sunday night, about 100 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles thrust into the central West Bank town of Qalqilya for the second time in three weeks.
Residents reported heavy machinegun fire and explosions, and said the Israelis had cut power and water supplies before moving in. The army said one soldier was badly wounded and seven were hurt when an explosive detonated during a house search.
Scores of Israeli tanks were poised on the edge of the West Bank town of Tulkarm, Palestinian security sources and residents said. The army said troops had cordoned off the town.
The security sources said Palestinian officers guarding an intelligence building in Tulkarm had left their posts when Israeli tanks moved towards the town, fearing they would come under attack. That allowed the two gunmen to enter and kill the suspected collaborators held there awaiting trial.
Hundreds of Palestinians gathered to view the bodies of the men after they were dragged out to the road. The gunmen fled.
The killing was the deadliest attack on men suspected of helping Israel track wanted militants since the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation 18 months ago.
The latest Israeli incursions into Palestinian-ruled towns followed a televised speech to the nation by Sharon, who promised an "uncompromising war to uproot these savages" and crush what he called a terror campaign directed by Arafat.
Sharon's tough message followed a day of violence in which a suicide bomber killed 15 people in the Israeli port of Haifa and Arafat's guards battled besieging Israeli troops.
The army, which has turned Ramallah into a closed military zone while it tracks down Palestinian militants, said it had rounded up more than 500 men for interrogation.
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