BEIT JALA, West Bank, Aug 30 (AFP) -
Israeli troops completed their withdrawal from the autonomous Palestinian town of Beit Jala in the West Bank at dawn Thursday, an Israeli military source said.

Tanks, jeeps and armoured personnel carriers took the troops out of the little town, key areas of which they had occupied for some 50 hours, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.

Colonel Farouk Amin of the Palestinian liaison office in the sector confirmed the report of the troop withdrawal.

An Israeli military spokesman said earlier that no Palestinian attacks had been launched during the night, the key condition for an Israeli withdrawal from the positions they had seized overnight Monday.

Israel and the Palestinians agreed Wednesday to a ceasefire in Beit Jala, after Israel's longest incursion of the uprising became bogged down by armed resistance and growing international criticism.(Read photo caption below)

Israel agreed that its troops would withdraw overnight if Palestinian shooting on the nearby Jewish settlement at Gilo, near east Jerusalem, was halted.


PHOTO CAPTION:
Armed Palestinians celebrate after an Israeli announcement to leave the West Bank town of Beit Jala, August 29, 2001. Israeli occupation troops had re-occupied sections of Beit Jala to try to end month of firing on Gilo, an internationally illegal settlement which Israel terms a neighborhood of Jerusalem. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)
- Aug 29 8:12 PM ET