Israeli occupation troops raided a Palestinian-ruled town in the Gaza Strip  on Sunday, killing two people and destroying a three-story apartment building in an operation to raze the family homes of Islamic resistance men, witnesses said. Residents of Beit Lahiya said 30 armored vehicles, backed by three helicopter gunships, rumbled into the town late on Saturday and cut it off from Gaza City, four miles away, before leaving about three hours later.

Gunmen crouched in graffiti-covered alleyways, bobbing up to fire at the Israeli occupation forces. Crowds of unarmed men cheered them on from a safe distance.

Hospital officials said a 32-year-old man had died in a neighborhood which had seen fighting and 20 other local people had been wounded.

The body of an elderly Palestinian was found under the rubble of one of the three homes demolished by the Israeli occupation forces, residents said. They speculated he had not heard the occupation army call over loudspeakers for people to vacate their homes.

Israeli occupation army sources said such demolitions can deter resistance men from attacking, as they know their kin will suffer. But one of the buildings razed on Sunday was a three-story apartment complex, home to several families. Dazed residents gazed at the rubble, most barefoot in the dust, some sobbing.

Israel has launched frequent incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence, with the stated aim of striking resistance behind attacks on Israelis.

The incursion on Beit Lahiya came hours after Palestinian witnesses said occupation troops killed a teenager on the nearby border with Israel on Saturday and ended a week in which the Jewish state was jarred by attacks on its citizens at home and abroad.

RESISTANCE MAN LEADER CAPTURED IN WEST BANK

In the West Bank on Saturday, Israeli occupation forces seized a leader of a group linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and suspected of being behind an attack on an Israeli polling booth that killed six people on Thursday.

The arrest of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander Majid al-Masri near Nablus followed a renewed pledge by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to hunt down those who target Israelis.

Thursday's strike by the Brigades, as voters in the Likud party leadership election cast ballots in the northern Israeli town of Beit Shean, followed bomb and missile attacks in Kenya that killed three Israeli tourists and 10 Kenyans.

In Beit Lahiya, occupation army engineers blew up the family homes of three Islamic resistance men, one of them wanted since 1996 for a Tel Aviv bus resistance bombing that killed 20 people.

Local residents said two of the men belonged to the Hamas group and the third to Islamic Jihad.

The occupation army said its occupation forces left the town by 2:30 a.m., and said occupation troops had fired in self-defense.

At least 1,688 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed since the uprising began in September 2000 after peace talks on a Palestinian state foundered.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian women cry next to a destroyed house in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza strip December 1, 2002. Israeli occupation troops and tanks raided a Palestinian-ruled town in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing a local man during clashes and razing the family homes of three resistance before leaving, witnesses said. (Oleg Popov/Reuter