JERICHO, West Bank (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Israeli tanks rumbled into the Palestinian-ruled city of Jericho attacking a security facility on Thursday and four Palestinians were killed in a gun battle with Israeli occupation forces advancing on another West Bank city, Palestinian officials said.The invasion of Palestinian-ruled territory coincided with a new U.S. call for Israeli-Palestinian truce talks as Washington sought to put together a world coalition against terror following the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.
In heavy fighting in Jenin, a West Bank city surrounded by Israeli occupation forces for the past two days, occupation soldiers killed three Palestinians and wounded 11 in an attack on a local-government building, a Palestinian security official said.
A fourth Palestinian died when he blew himself up next to an Israeli tank, the official said. There were no reports of Israeli casualties.
As the fighting raged in Jenin, 12 Israeli tanks, accompanied by bulldozers, moved 1.2 miles inside Palestinian-ruled territory attacking a training center used by Palestinian forces in Jericho, further to the south in the West Bank, another security official said.
He said one Palestinian woman had been wounded in Jericho.
WORLD ATTENTION ELSEWHERE
``There is fierce resistance to the Israelis. The tanks are moving toward Palestinian headquarters, where all the Palestinian security offices are located,'' Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, a Jericho resident, told Reuters.
Erekat, a peace negotiator, accused Israel of launching an offensive against the Palestinians while world attention was focused on the terror attacks in the United States that toppled the World Trade Center and turned part of the Pentagon into an inferno.
In fighting on Wednesday in and around Jenin, Israeli troops killed at least seven Palestinians, hospital officials and witnesses said.
Later on Wednesday, Palestinian Resistance men shot dead a Jewish settler traveling in a car near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, said a spokesman for the settler umbrella group, YESHA.
Israeli fire meanwhile destroyed two security posts in Qalqilya and one in the nearby town of Salfit, Palestinian witnesses said.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he had urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hold truce talks even in the midst of the crisis over Tuesday's devastating attacks on New York and Washington.
He said he spoke by telephone with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
PERES CALLS FOR CRACKDOWN
Peres told Israel Radio he hoped the Palestinian Authority would take note of the attacks in the United States and crack down on militants behind a wave of Resistance bombings in Israel in recent months.
``The Palestinians have to say they are completely against the terror and those that send them,'' Peres said.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Arafat, accused Israel of ''taking advantage of the international situation to escalate its war against the Palestinian territories.''
Israel says it has information a bomber who killed three Israelis at a railway station on Sunday had hidden in Jenin and the Palestinian Authority had refused requests to arrest him.
Calling Jenin a ``terrorists nest,'' Israel has said at least six Palestinian bombers who carried out attacks in the past year of uprising against occupation had set off on their missions from the city.
On the diplomatic front, Abu Rdainah said Arafat delayed a visit to Syria on Wednesday because of ``the current circumstances.''
Arafat, who gave blood in Gaza on Wednesday for victims of the attacks in the United States, has sent his condolences to the U.S. government and people. Palestinian militant groups have denied any involvement, but not all issued condemnations. (Read photo caption below)
Some Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus and Arab East Jerusalem rejoiced publicly on Tuesday in an expression of frustration at U.S. support for Israel.
But dozens of Palestinian men, women and children gathered on Wednesday in front of the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, lighting candles and placing flowers along its walls.
Some of the placards they carried read: ``Terror is our common enemy'' and ``We are victims too.''
Israelis also held memorial vigils and donated blood.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat donates blood in Gaza hospital September 12, 2001, for the victims of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in the United States. Palestinians said they sympathized with the victims of the attack in the United States despite their criticism of U.S. support for Israel during the Palestinian uprising. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah