Israeli Troops Kill 2 Palestinians in Raid : Mideast: Pair suspected of plotting attacks in revenge for arrests of 30 Hamas comrades. Men are not linked to this week’s bus bombing, officials say.

Continuing their campaign against the Islamic extremist movement Hamas, Israeli troops on Friday killed two Palestinians holed up in a house in the West Bank town of Hebron.

The men were not part of the Hamas cell that carried out Monday’s fatal bus bombing in Jerusalem but belonged to another unit that is expected to launch revenge attacks for Israel’s arrest of about 30 Hamas members in the past week, Israeli officials said.

Israeli radio reported that Hamas issued a statement early Friday vowing to increase terrorist attacks.

Israeli Maj. Gen. Ilan Biran, the Israeli army commander in the West Bank, congratulated his troops for the urban assault.

“This is a very important operation. It prevented murderous terrorism against Jews in the Judea and Hebron regions,” Biran said. “The [unit] has carried out an excellent, model operation.”

Biran said the army’s undercover troops, acting on information from Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, surrounded a one-story house on the outskirts of Hebron early Friday and exchanged gunfire with the Palestinians. The two men were shot dead.

According to Palestinian reports, the men did not fire at Israeli troops.

After the shooting, the army sent in the owner of the house to open windows and doors to ensure the building was not booby-trapped, witnesses told reporters in Hebron. Israeli troops took away the bodies and bulldozed the house, as they often do in such operations.

The dead were identified as Hebron residents Ibrahim Kawasmi, 25, and Nader Shehadeh, 21. Both had been jailed for activities in connection with the Hamas military branch and were wanted by Israeli authorities. They reportedly were in contact with Hamas military leaders outside the country.

Biran said they belonged to a cell once led by Taker Kafisha, who was killed by soldiers in a similar operation June 29. Biran said soldiers on Friday seized several weapons at the house, including Kalashnikov and M-16 assault rifles, a pistol and a hand grenade.

A daylong curfew was imposed in Hebron, one of the most strife-torn West Bank cities and a point of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

The Palestinians want Israeli troops to withdraw from Hebron and Palestinian police to take control of the city, just as they will take over other major West Bank Arab cities after an agreement is signed with the Jewish state.

But the Israelis want special security arrangements to protect the 400 Jewish settlers who live in Hebron among about 100,000 Palestinians.

The city has long been a flash point of Jewish-Arab violence. In February, 1994, a Jewish settler from nearby Kiryat Arba fatally shot about 30 Arabs praying at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Muslims and Jews.

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As peace talks continued Friday, both sides reported progress on other difficult issues, including water distribution. The talks were suspended for a day after the Hamas bomber killed himself and four other people on a Jerusalem bus Monday.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem bombing and another in Ramat Gan--near Tel Aviv--last month that killed six people. The group promised more violence in its campaign to bring down the peace process and the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who approved the 1993 peace accord along with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat.

On Wednesday, Shin Bet said it had arrested about 30 members of the cell responsible for the two most recent bus bombings. Among those jailed was Abdel Nasser Issa, said to be the head of the bombing ring and a student of Israel’s most wanted man, Yehiya Ayyash, the bomb maker known as “The Engineer.”

Palestinian police said they are hunting Ayyash in the Gaza Strip. Israeli radio reported this morning that Palestinian authorities in Jericho captured another Hamas member allegedly involved in the Jerusalem blast. His name was not released.