Bloody siege ends as sides await Powell

JENIN - The guns were finally silenced in the Jenin refugee camp last night as the Middle East awaited the arrival of United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on his daunting peace mission.

Three dozen Palestinian gunmen, the last holdouts in a weeklong bloody battle with Israeli forces in the Jenin refugee camp, finally surrendered.

The group, including two local militia leaders, laid down their weapons and walked out of two buildings.

The Jenin camp was the scene of the deadliest fighting in Israel's two-week military offensive in the West Bank. Hundreds of armed men barricaded themselves in the camp, booby-trapping buildings and alleys.

Thirteen Israeli soldiers were killed in a sophisticated double ambush in the camp, the largest single combat loss sustained by Israel since 1983.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said 500 Palestinians had been killed so far in Israel's offensive. The figure could not be independently verified.

Fighting wound down yesterday, after the remaining gunmen said they had run out of ammunition. Several hundred camp residents, including armed men and civilians, surrendered earlier.

Israeli troops last night still occupied the West Bank's major population centres, including Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus.

Israeli troops fresh from the battle in Jenin yesterday described it as "hell".

In other developments:

* The Army launched fresh raids into two Palestinian towns and a refugee camp but said it had withdrawn from dozens of other places in the past 24 hours.

Just hours before Powell was due to arrive in Israel, the Army said its forces swept into the towns of Bir Zeit and Dahariya and the Ein Beit Elma refugee camp, making arrests and seizing weapons.

* A suspected Palestinian suicide bomber was killed when the explosives he was wearing blew up in Hebron.

The explosion took place near a taxi stand where cabs leave for cities in Israel, such as Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheba.

* An Armenian monk seriously wounded in the besieged Church of the Nativity compound was apparently shot by an Israeli soldier who mistook him for a gunman.

* Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted President George W. Bush's call for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian areas, saying Israel was fighting a war against terrorism similar to the US war in Afghanistan.

"At the very moment when support for Israel should be stronger than ever, my nation is being asked to stop fighting," he told a group of about 20 senators in Washington.

Yesterday Jenin looked eerily becalmed from the vantage point of a nearby hilltop Army camp where the mood was strikingly relaxed.

Soldiers posed for snaps on top of tanks, others called home on their cellphones, taking in a pep talk from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The troops told reporters that Jenin had proven the worst shock to the Middle East's most vaunted Army in the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising.

The ambush punctuated days of pitched, close-quarter fighting between Israeli armoured forces struggling to manoeuvre in the narrow, twisting streets of Jenin, especially its refugee camp, and bands of Palestinian militants.

"It was hell the last two days in Jenin. They were firing from everywhere to everywhere - it was scary and crazy," said Corporal Yaron Zeltzer, 20, a gunner in a company of armoured combat vehicles with anti-aircraft calibre machineguns.

"It got tougher and tougher for us as we moved from a pretty easy beginning in Ramallah up to Nablus and then Jenin," said Zeltzer, whose unit was getting 24 hours of leave from action while others arrived.

The Army launched its blitz in Ramallah, where it quelled resistance with few casualties.

Nablus, the biggest Palestinian city in the West Bank, put up a tough fight in its medieval casbah district, and then Jenin became a cauldron.

"We usually could not even get out of our tanks and APCs [armoured personnel carriers] because the shooting was so close and so intense," said Sergeant Dov Rifken, a tank gunner.

"The Palestinians were very well prepared for us in Jenin, where there is a particularly hard core of terrorists. All of our deaths and injuries I think were from bombs which were hidden well in many different places - in sewers, for example, even in women's purses," said Zeltzer.

Some soldiers said any doubts about the justification for tough military action in Palestinian areas dissipated after a March 27 suicide bombing that killed 27 Israelis at a Passover holiday feast.

"The whole world doesn't appreciate what is happening here. It always sees the Palestinians as victims. But the soldiers all feel now they are standing up for their country," said Aroya.

- REUTERS

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