HIGHLIGHTS: Bush Furious over University Bombing & May Retaliate for the Death of Five Americans in the Blast on Tuesday||Hamas Denies It Has Deliberately Targeted Americans||Occupation Troops Kill 19-year Old Girl in Central Gaza Thursday||Israel Expels Two Bombers' Brothers to Gaza for Two Years|| STORY: Israeli occupation troops backed by more than 100 tanks poured into the center of the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, killing three Palestinians as Israel struck back for a deadly bombing in Jerusalem.

The Israeli occupation army said it was launching a mission to root out a "local terror network" just two days after Hamas militants detonated a bomb in a cafeteria at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, killing five Americans and two Israelis.

The bodies of two of the American victims were being flown home on Friday as the FBI) launched an investigation into the attack, which drew words of outrage from President Bush.

The deaths of Americans seemed certain to complicate U.S. attempts to act as an even-handed peace broker in a conflict that has raged for more than 22 months.

After vowing harsh retaliation against the militant group Hamas for carrying out the bombing, Israel sent columns of tanks deep into the heart of Palestinian-ruled Nablus, which had been surrounded and under strict curfew for weeks, witnesses said.

Troops exchanged fire with Resistance men as they assaulted their main target, the Casbah, or Old City, a warren of alleyways where Palestinian fighters holed up and fought fiercely during a month-long Israeli offensive in the West Bank last spring.

Israel's occupation Army Radio reported that occupation army sources believed the bomb planted at Hebrew University was assembled at an underground munitions workshop in the northern West Bank city.

HAMAS ACTIVIST, TWO OTHER PALESTINIANS KILLED

Israeli forces seized control of Nablus and most other West Bank cities and towns following back-to-back Resistance bombings in Jerusalem in mid-June, but this was the largest incursion into the city center since the operation began.

Palestinian security and medical sources said occupation troops killed a Hamas member in his home in a village on the outskirts of Nablus and shot dead two other Palestinians in the Casbah area.

Half a dozen tanks also thrust into the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday, and a Palestinian man was killed by Israeli gunfire, Palestinian security sources said.

Late on Thursday, occupation soldiers guarding an internationally illegal Jewish settlement in the central Gaza Strip shot dead a nine-year-old Palestinian girl, Palestinian security sources said.

The Israeli occupation army branded Nablus a "base for terrorist groups" behind a recent wave of attacks and said troops were conducting house-to-house searches in a sweep for militants.

The Israeli operation followed Bush's harsh condemnation of Wednesday's bombing in Jerusalem and an expression of support for Israel's right to defend itself.

"I'm just as angry as Israel is right now," Bush told reporters in Washington on Thursday. "I'm furious that innocent life was lost. However, through my fury, even though I am mad, I still believe peace is possible."

Bush gave no indication the United States would retaliate against Hamas. But a Hamas leader was quick to deny his group had deliberately targeted U.S. citizens.

ISRAEL EXPELLS FIRST PALESTINIANS

Israel has meanwhile made good on its threat to expel relatives of wanted Palestinians -- officially ordering two brothers of Resistance activists to the Gaza Strip -- following two Jerusalem bombings in as many.

Israel's Center for the Defense of the Individual said the West bank occupation army leadership had announced that Gaza Kifah Adjuri, 28, from Askar refugee camp, and Abdel Nasser Assidi, 34, from the village of Tel, both in the West Bank, would each be expelled for two years.

The men are just two of 21 Palestinians arrested in mid-July because they were related to Resistance activists who killed 14 people in two bloody attacks last month. All except one who was released on health grounds were reportedly being detained for questioning at the Russian Compound jail in Jerusalem.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian throws stones toward Israeli tanks that entered the refugee camp of Balata, near the West Bank city of Nablus, August 1,2002. A U.N. report on Israel's assault on the Jenin refugee camp on Thursday blamed all sides, saying Israel endangered civilians by using heavy weaponry in densely populated areas while 200 Palestinian fighters used the West Bank camp as a base. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusi