Israel’s top security chiefs are looking to tighten the already shortened Gaza Strip evacuation timetable, defence and government officials said today.

A Palestinian teenager with 11 pounds of explosives strapped to his body blew himself up in a crowded Tel Aviv outdoor market today, killing three Israelis and wounding 32 in the first such attack since Yasser Arafat left the region for medical treatment last week.

ISRAELI tanks and bulldozers pulled back from the Palestinian town of Beit Lahiya yesterday after tearing up roads, flattening strawberry greenhouses and knocking down walls of dozens of houses in what residents said was the most devastating raid in four years of fighting.

Israel’s internal security service chief warned today that as many as 200 Jewish settlers want to see Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dead because of his plan to dismantle settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

PALESTINIAN militants fired a barrage of home-made rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot yesterday, killing an Israeli man and a three-year-old boy near the toddler’s nursery as youngsters were arriving at school.

Israeli military intelligence claims Yasser Arafat has amassed a personal fortune of €1.3bn.