HIGHLIGHTS:Occupation Troops Attacked with Gunfire in Tubas and with Mortar Shells in Rafah||A FATAH Leader Arrested in Gaza||60 Palestinians Arrested in Ramallah|| STORY: Five Israeli occupation soldiers were wounded early Thursday morning while combing the northern West Bank and southern Gaza Strip for Palestinian Resistance activists and weaponry, according to an Israeli statement. (Read photo caption)

Two soldiers were injured lightly in the northern West Bank town of Tubas as they came under gunfire while entering the area to launch yet another rolling raid.

In Gaza, occupation soldiers came under mortar fire near the southernmost town of Rafiah. Three soldiers were wounded and taken to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, media reports said.

The troops arrested one suspect in Gaza, a man from the Fatah movement, which is headed by Palestinian Authority head Yasser Arafat.

During a several day incursion in Ramallah where Arafat's headquarters is located , occupation soldiers arrested 60 suspected Resistance activists, and found two cars laden with explosives that were to have been used to attack Israelis.

ROLLING RAIDS CAMPAIGN

The Israeli raids into Tubas in the West Bank and in Rafah in the Gaza Strip come in the context of a campaign of rolling raids that has failed to stem a new wave of bomb attacks in Israel.

Palestinian attacks in the West Bank against occupation soldiers and settlers living on occupied land gathered momentum over the past two weeks despite the campaign and an military offensive Israel launched in the area in late March following the killing of scores of Israelis in bomb attacks.

PHOTO CAPTION

A house is blown up where the Israeli army said a tunnel was built by Palestinians, leading from the Gaza Strip town of Rafah into Egypt, May 15, 2002. (Reuters - Handout)