HIGHLIGHTS: Israeli Tank Targets Titi & Companions||Search and Destroy Operations Near Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and in Tulkarem||Gaza Cut into 3 Parts||STORY: Israeli tank fire killed four Palestinians in the West Bank Wednesday afternoon, including one wanted for his direct responsibility in a number of Bombings. Mahmoud Titi, 29, Imad Khatib, 24, and Iyad Abu Hmeydan, 26, were killed in the Balata refugee camp, apparently after being targeted by an Israeli tank firing from a position near the town of Nablus.(Read photo caption)

The three were all members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah group that has carried out numerous anti-Israeli attacks. 

A passerby, Bashir Yaish, 40, was also killed, dying after being hit during the attack.

Titi was a local Fatah chief who was wanted for his direct involvement in Resistance bombing attacks on Israeli targets.

Titi was jailed in Israel from 1992 to 1994 for carrying illegal weapons and went to work for Palestinian preventative security under Colonel Jibril Rajoub upon his release.

MORE KILLINGS & DETENTIONS IN THE WEST BANK

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli occupation forces killed three Palestinian men. Two were killed near the village of Silat al-arthiya, northwest of Jenin.
One of them armed and wearing an explosive belt.

The radical group Islamic Jihad later identified him as Khalid Zakarna, 30, a local leader of their armed wing.

A number of men were detained in another village nearby.

The third Palestinian killed by Israeli occupation forces died in a separate incident near Bethlehem. He was shot dead after he reportedly failed to raise his hands when ordered and made a suspicious gesture.

He was identified by Palestinian sources as Mussa Abdullah Ashwani from Bethlehem.

Israeli occupation forces also arrested 19 Palestinians-13 of them during a raid on the Palestinian self-rule village of Salfit, halfway between Nablus and Ramallah. One member of the security forces in the village was wounded in the raid.

Three others were arrested a village near the West Bank city of Hebron. A young woman in the self-rule town of Tulkarem on the border with Israel was also arrested Tulkarem has been frequently raided by occupation forces looking for would-be bombers trying to cross the border.

Israeli occupation forces also searched a small self-rule farming community east of Jericho.

GAZA CUT INTO THREE PARTS

Meanwhile, Israel occupation forces cut the Gaza Strip in three, closing the main road of the narrow coastal region at two points after a spate of mortar attacks on Jewish settlements in recent days.

Israeli occupation forces cut off the movement of Palestinians between the northern and southern parts of the Strip, in what they said was a response to mortar bomb attacks on Jewish settlements.

PHOTO CAPTION
A Palestinian medic prepares to move into the morgue the body of Bashir Yaeesh, a bystander killed in an Israeli targeted killing of militants, roughly an hour after the attack, at a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, Wednesday, May 22, 2002. Three Fatah militants were killed when multiple Israel tank shells were fired into a house from an Israeli Army base overlooking Nablus. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley