Israel clamps down on West Bank city

A Palestinian man was killed and another wounded Monday as a major Israeli military raid in Nablus kept the heart of the West Bank city under curfew for a second day.

The Israeli army said the incursion, the largest in Nablus in months, was aimed at armed militants and what it calls the “terrorist infrastructure” rooted in a city that has long been a hotbed of Palestinian fighters.

Troops backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers operated in the Old City section, a cramped labyrinth of shops and apartments. Thousands of residents were ordered to stay inside.

The operation, which began in earnest early Sunday, was expected to last several days.

Officials said most of the planned suicide attacks against Israelis that were thwarted during the last year, and most of the explosive belts seized in the West Bank in the last six months, had originated in Nablus.

Brig. Gen. Yair Golan, division commander for the West Bank, said recent intelligence reports suggested that Palestinian militants were growing stronger and that the army needed to counter that.

“We have to cut down the threat from the city,” Golan told reporters in a conference call.

He said Israeli forces had discovered four storerooms containing explosives, electrical devices used in bombs, belts used by suicide bombers and communications equipment. The Old City is a favored hiding place for gunmen.

Israeli forces broadcast over local radio and television the names of six wanted men. Golan said dozens of Palestinians had been detained, though none of the most-sought fugitives.

The Israeli operations, which closed streets and left people confined to their homes, drew sharp denunciations from Palestinian leaders, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, an Israeli-based group, charged that soldiers’ searches of Palestinian ambulances were delaying the transport of the sick and injured to hospitals.

Golan said the searches, aimed at finding militants, were brief and did not impede medical treatment.

Residents expressed fear that their homes would be targeted unfairly.

“People worry if the soldiers raid their house at night, they will force them to go out in the rain and cold weather. This is what scares them most,” Nimr al-Dari, 42, who lives in the Old City with his elderly parents, said by telephone.

Palestinians said Anan Tibi, 42, was killed by Israeli fire as he stood outside his house. His 20-year-old son, Ashraf, was wounded when he came to help, medical officials said.

But Israeli military officials said soldiers fired after they spotted three suspected militants moving across a rooftop. Two were hit by Israeli fire, an army spokesman said. He said troops later found a homemade gun at the scene.

Israeli authorities Monday announced the arrests of two Palestinian men in connection with the fatal stabbing a night earlier of a Jewish settler near the West Bank town of Hebron.

Police said the suspects, both 18, admitted killing Erez Levanon, 42, of the Bat Ayin settlement, about 15 miles south of Jerusalem. The suspects said they acted on their own and not on behalf of a militant group, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Levanon was reported missing from the rural community Sunday evening.

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ellingwood@latimes.com

Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah contributed to this report.