DOZENS of Israeli soldiers sealed off the Old City of Nablus with barbed wire and cement blocks yesterday, while troops conducted house-to-house searches in one of the biggest operations in the area in months.

PALESTINIAN leaders were yesterday locked in a power struggle triggered by Yasser Arafat's attempt to hand control over all the security forces to a loyalist in the apparent hope of sidelining the US-backed Palestinian security chief, officials said.

PALESTINIANS shot dead a rabbi from a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Thursday in what militants called the first response to an Israeli air strike that killed 15 Palestinians, including a top militant.