Israeli troops leave Hebron

Israeli troops left the West Bank city of Hebron today, ending the latest of a series of brief incursions into Palestinian territory.

The force of three tanks, about 20 armoured personnel carriers and some 20 jeeps, entered Hebron before daybreak and left a few hours later, witnesses said.

Palestinian security officials said the Israeli military arrested three people during the incursion, one of them a local leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas. It was not immediately clear who the other two were.

Yesterday, the Israelis staged a quick raid on Beitunia, a suburb of Ramallah and were holding Bethlehem and surrounding villages and refugee camps for a fourth day, keeping residents in their homes as they searched for militants, explosives and weapons.

In Beit Sahour, next to Bethlehem, soldiers detained a woman who was ‘‘on her way to carry out a suicide bombing attack’’, the military said, identifying her as 20-year-old Arin Ahmed.

Israel Radio said she planned to bomb the Israeli city of Rishon Letzion last week but changed her mind at the last moment. On May 22, a 16-year-old Palestinian blew himself up in Rishon Letzion, killing himself and two Israelis.

The Israelis lifted the curfew in Bethlehem for a few hours yesterday to allow residents to buy food. Defiant children rode their bicycles in front of the huge tanks.

Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Mada, an Israeli army commander in the region, indicated that the army’s stay was not about to end. ‘‘As long as we think that we haven’t destroyed the terror infrastructure, we will stay there,’’ he said. ‘‘We haven’t finished yet.’’

The Palestinian leadership issued a statement denouncing the Israeli incursions, which take place almost nightly.

The statement, distributed by the Palestinian news agency Wafa, charged that Israeli forces are ‘‘continuing their aggression ... practicing random arrests and humiliating the citizens and firing on residential areas, killing and wounding many civilians’’.

Near Nablus, soldiers shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian.

The military said soldiers thought he was holding a weapon and ordered him to stop, but he fled and was killed when soldiers fired at him.

The implement he was holding was a farm tool, the military said.

In funerals around the country on yesterday, Israelis buried victims of Palestinian attacks - a baby and her grandmother, killed by a suicide bomber in a Tel Aviv suburb on Monday, a motorist shot dead in a West Bank road ambush late on Tuesday and three school students shot by a Palestinian who infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Itamar near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Though the Palestinian leadership has condemned attacks inside Israel, Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said that does not apply to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

‘‘The Palestinian people have the complete right to resist the Israeli occupation and settlements in our land,’’ he said.

Foreign minister Shimon Peres said Israel’s security cabinet, composed of senior ministers, agreed yesterday on military measures in response to the latest attacks, but he would not elaborate.