US envoy William Burns concluded his peace mission to the region with very little to show for his effort as Israel looked to crush hardline groups in Jenin, now in the second day of full-fledged reoccupation.Burns, who flew off for Yemen Saturday morning, was promoting a US-backed plan for a peace settlement within three years, but failed to win any substantial support from either Israel or the Palestinians.

His visit ended as the Israeli occupation army tightened its noose on Jenin, which it invaded early Friday in retaliation for a resistance bombing that killed 14 Israelis on a bus in northern Israel.

Israeli occupation troops have arrested six resistance men in the West Bank town, occupation army sources said.

They had also taken over 40 houses and imposed a blanket curfew since they poured into the town in their biggest operation in at least three months, the sources said.

The occupation army had also destroyed the family homes of the two teenage resistance bombers from Islamic Jihad who carried out Monday's resistance bombing.

The offensive, named Operation Vanguard, saw the occupation army arrest a top official from Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank who has ordered attacks on Israel in recent months.

"We do not have any choice to avoid new attacks. We cannot be content to surround Jenin. We must penetrate here to put an end to the preparations of Jihad and Hamas," an officer said, quoted by the radio.

The officer said the "house-to-house searches, based on intelligence furnished by Shin Beth (Israel's domestic security service) to hunt for terrorists, arms caches and explosives, will go on for several days."

Palestinian security sources confirmed the arrests, but said none of the men are resistance men and that the army "conducted random arrests."

Hundreds of occupation soldiers were hunting 20 wanted resistance men in this West Bank city that Israel says served as the nerve center for Monday's bombing.

Palestinian security and hospital sources said five Palestinians were hit by Israeli gunfire in the Friday operation, including a 17-year-old boy who was seriously wounded.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer called Jenin a "capital of terrorism," as he defended the occupation army's tactics in the West Bank, which the international community has criticised for imposing great hardship on Palestinians civilians.

The occupation army reoccupied most of the West Bank in mid-June after a wave of resistance bombings and has since imposed blanket curfews and blocked off cities in a bid to foil attacks.

It was the occupation army's biggest offensive since it moved into the West Bank city of Nablus after a bombing killed seven Israelis at Jerusalem's Hebrew University at the end of July, the occupation army said.

It was also the largest offensive on Jenin since hundreds of occupation soldiers battled it out with Palestinian resistance men during a six-week occupation army invasion of the West Bank last spring.

The Jenin incursion came just hours after Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The US envoy was seeking to win backing for an international plan to end two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting which has left more than 2,600 people dead.

Sharon demanded the Palestinians root out "terrorism" before any plan goes forward with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state by the end of 2005, occupation army radio said.

Burns met with an official Palestinian delegation on Thursday, telling them to crack down on resistance man groups and reform their administration before the establishment of an independent state.

Burns snubbed Yasser Arafat as part of US and Israeli efforts to sideline the ageing Palestinian leader, whom they accuse of backing resistance man groups.

He has been trying to convince both sides to back the plan put together by Washington, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

In a nod to US pressure to ease conditions in the West Bank, Israeli occupation troops pulled out from most of the Palestinian autonomous area in Hebron, a move approved by Sharon last Sunday.

But the withdrawal appears to be purely symbolic, as occupation troops remain on the hills overlooking the sector where some 600 radical Jewish settlers live in an enclave amid the majority Palestinian population.

And two new occupation army outpost were set up on rooftops in the centre of Hebron Sunday, Palestinian security sources said.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Israeli occupation soldier frisks a group of Palestinians as they are arrested in the West Bank city of Hebron October 25, 2002. Hundreds of Israeli occupation soldiers backed by scores of tanks and other occupation army vehicles took control of the Palestinian city of Jenin on Friday in response to a resistance bombing that killed 14 people October 21. REUTERS/Loay Abu Haykel