Two killed in Israeli camp blitz

Israeli soldiers killed two armed Palestinians during a raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the army said.

The soldiers shot the armed militants after a fierce gun battle erupted in the Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah, the army said.

In a separate incident, soldiers surrounded a house where a fugitive was hiding, the army said. The militant threw a grenade at the troops, who then fired at him. It was unclear whether the militant was wounded, the army said.

Soldiers backed by dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles raided the city overnight, conducting house-to-house searches, arresting Hamas militants and demolishing homes and an Internet café.

The raids came just hours before Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators headed to Geneva to sign an unofficial peace plan, and a day before Palestinian factions were to meet in Cairo for cease-fire talks.

More than 60 tanks, jeeps and armoured personnel carriers entered Ramallah after midnight, carrying out house-to-house searches across the city, Palestinian security officials said.

Palestinian witnesses said dozens of people were arrested, including a Hamas leader, Ghassan Abassi. Israeli military officials confirmed “a number” of arrests, and said they had uncovered an explosives laboratory, which the army had destroyed.

Palestinian witnesses said the army had destroyed an old house and an Internet café.

The army said the raid – carried out by commandos, tanks and the Shin Bet security service – targeted the Hamas infrastructure in the Ramallah area, which it says is behind attacks that have killed more than 60 Israelis in the last three years of fighting.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been holed up in his Ramallah headquarters for nearly two years, and Israel has threatened to expel him in the past. But despite its scope, the army stressed the raid was “nothing unusual”.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied the raid was timed to coincide with the signing of the Geneva Accord, which the government opposes and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called subversive. The official said the raid was part of Israel’s “ongoing war on terrorism and not contingent on anything else.”

At Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, dozens of Israeli and Palestinian politicians, local celebrities and journalists gathered to board a Swiss charter to Geneva.

The delegates will be signing the so-called Geneva Accords, an unofficial peace plan worked out during two years of secret negotiations between Israeli opposition figures and Palestinians.

Former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, who initiated the negotiations, said he hoped the agreement would galvanise public opinion to support the moves laid out in the plan.

The unofficial treaty proposes borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state close to Israel’s borders before the 1967 Mideast war, giving the Palestinians almost all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and part of Jerusalem.

It calls for the removal of most Israeli settlements there and largely sidesteps the so-called “right of return” for Palestinians who fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 war that followed Israel’s creation and their descendants. It also divides sovereignty in Jerusalem.

The ceremony is to be attended by former US President Jimmy Carter and other winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.