The Israeli army said yesterday that it had killed more than 30 armed Palestinians in close combat in the West Bank city of Nablus, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon defied a US appeal to pull out of Palestinian cities.
"There are constant battles -- fighting in alleyways, from house to house," Colonel Aviv Cochavi, commander of Israel's Paratroop Brigade, said.
"More than 30 terrorists -- armed people -- have been killed in the past 48 hours," he said about the fighting in the narrow casbah, or market, of the northern West Bank city. "Two Israeli soldiers were wounded."
Israeli military experts say the army aims to attain as many of its goals -- including capturing Palestinians on a wanted list -- as it can before US Secretary of State Colin Powell visits this week, but risks angering its key ally.
The US provides US$3 billion in annual aid, equal to about 3 percent of Israel's GDP.
Palestinian figures put the number of Palestinian dead in Nablus at 27. Helicopter gunships and tanks pounded the city in a new wave of attacks that charred buildings and sent white columns of smoke rising.
Deflecting a call by US President George W. Bush for a withdrawal from West Bank cities "without delay," Sharon said Israel's desire to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties while sweeping for militants meant the offensive could not be hurried.
"This, in itself, prolongs the operation," Sharon said in broadcast remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Palestinians have charged that innocent civilians have been bearing the brunt of the assault that began after a Palestinian suicide bomber struck in an Israeli hotel during a Passover holiday meal on March 27, killing 27 people.
In a test of wills with Israel, Bush told Sharon in a telephone call on Saturday that a renewed US peace mission was at stake, a senior US official said.
But Israeli commentators forecast the offensive, which has turned Palestinian city centers into war zones and confined hundreds of thousands of frightened residents to their homes, would continue for at least another week.
Opinion polls show that Israelis, rocked by suicide bombings that have deepened fears no place in Israel is safe, support overwhelmingly an operation that has boosted support for Sharon.
Sharon's office said he told Bush that "Israel will make every effort to accelerate" the operation.
Amid mounting European and Arab calls for Israel to withdraw, Bush has toughened his message to Sharon. But Bush also has kept up his sharp criticism of Arafat, saying he failed the test of leadership by not halting anti-Israeli attacks.
The army's spokesman, Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey, said the military had received no orders to change its battle plan.
"Things are going ahead as we planned," he told Army Radio about the campaign in which scores of Palestinians and at least 13 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
In south Gaza soldiers killed two Palestinians who tried to plant explosives near a Jewish settlement, Morag, the army said.
Israeli forces in the West Bank raided two villages near Ramallah and a village outside Hebron.
Kitrey said the military was looking in rural areas for militants who had fled cities invaded by the army.
Publishing statistics on the operation it calls "Defensive Shield", the army said that since March 28 it had detained 1,413 Palestinians, among them 361 on its wanted list.
In fierce West Bank fighting on Saturday, soldiers and gunmen battled alley by alley in the crowded Jenin refugee camp.
The army said at least 14 Palestinians and seven Israeli soldiers had been killed in the past 48 hours in Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian militants.
An armed Palestinian told Reuters he had counted 30 dead bodies in the camp. The accounts could not be independently confirmed because Israel has barred journalists from the camp.
A standoff continued at the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
About 200 Palestinians, some armed, have been holed up there since Tuesday and the area is surrounded by Israeli troops. The army says priests and nuns who are still inside are being held captive but some of the priests have denied they are hostages.
Palestinian Christians held a service inside the church yesterday.
"We have done a little mass for those of us who are in the chapel," Father Amjad Sabbara said. "There were 10 persons. Our congregation in Bethlehem is 5,000."
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