A resistance bomber wearing an explosive belt was killed along with another Palestinian as the device blew up at an Israeli occupation army checkpoint in the West Bank, an occupation army spokesman said. The blast came on a day when Israeli occupation forces continued their crackdown on Palestinian resistance activists, carrying out arrests at three different locations in the West Bank. The blast took place at a crossroads near Kedumim settlement, close to the Palestinian town of Nablus, after soldiers ordered a suspect-looking taxi to stop.

The two dead were said to be young men, but their identities were not immediately available.

The spokesman said the occupation troops arrested the taxi-driver, who had been wounded, and drove him to an Israeli hospital. Another bomb had been found in the car.

The incident occurred some 20 kilometres east of the Green Line that separates the West Bank from Israel.

Earlier, public radio said police had been placed on high alert in an area northeast of Tel Aviv that is not far from where the two Palestinians died. The area in question runs from Kafar Qassem, just east of Tel Aviv, to Taibeh, (12 kilometres) north.

Public television, for its part, said the Shin Beth domestic intelligence service had alerted police that a suspected bomber had left Nablus and was headed for an attack inside Israel or against a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

A Palestinian bomber killed himself and two others in an attack on Monday in Kfar Saba, in the same area.

Meanwhile, Israeli undercover units arrested the local political leader of the Palestinian Jihad movement in Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank.

The occupation authorities also seized 11 members of three "Tanzim" resistance cells who were accused of killing five Israelis between February and October.

Separately, two resistance men of the Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) were arrested near Bethlehem.

Palestinian resistance Jihad leader Abdel Nasser Sweiss was caught inside his brothers' downtown supermarket in Tulkarem by Israeli special forces dressed in civilian clothing, Palestinian witnesses said.

Sweiss, 38, was on Israel's wanted list. His movement's military wing has claimed numerous anti-Israeli attacks, including deadly bombings.

South of Hebron, the occupation army and Shin Beth netted three Tanzim cells near the village of Yatta.

The network was also planning several more operations including a bomb attack in Jerusalem and the killing of an Israeli who employed one of its members.

To the north in the village of Hussan, near Bethlehem, Israeli occupation troops arrested two PFLP resistance men in their early twenties.

The PFLP has claimed several anti-Israeli attacks since the beginning of the 25-month-old Palestinian uprising, including the assassination of an Israeli minister in October 2001 in retaliation for the killing of its leader.

Meanwhile, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was seriously wounded in the chest when an Israeli tank opened fire on a group of young stone-throwers in Nablus.

It was not clear whether the boy, Rashad Yassin, was participating in the clashes that take place almost daily in the northern West Bank city, reoccupied by the Israeli occupation army since June.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Israeli tank passes burning tires on a street in Nablus, during a curfew November 5 2002. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusi