Israel takes over largest West Bank town

? A week into Israel’s largest military offensive in a generation, troops on Thursday took over Nablus, the West Bank’s largest city, fought intense battles with gunmen barricaded in nearby refugee camps and tightened a cordon around armed Palestinians holed up in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

Armed men inside the ancient basilica, built over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born, said Israeli troops blew open a metal door leading into a church courtyard and fired inside, wounding three people. The army denied soldiers made a move on the church, one of Christianity’s holiest shrines, but said troops were chasing gunmen in the area.

The Israeli military prevented reporters from reaching the church to assess the rival claims. All six West Bank towns taken over by Israel in the past week have been declared closed military areas, and reporters have been ordered to leave.

Five Palestinians were killed in Thursday’s fighting, including three gunmen and a church caretaker, who witnesses said was shot while walking to the Church of the Nativity from his home.

World concern for the explosive situation was growing. A senior European diplomat said U.S. mediation efforts had failed, and that Washington should step aside as primary peacemaker.

Israel, meanwhile, blocked a high-level European mediation attempt, saying European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique would not be permitted to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who has been in what amounts to Israeli custody for a week. The European diplomats met Thursday with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni to give a fresh hearing to a U.S. request for a Zinni-Arafat meeting. Officials close to the diplomatic efforts said Sharon told Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday that Zinni would not be able to see Arafat.

Israel launched “Operation Defensive Shield” last Friday to crush Palestinian militias that have carried out deadly attacks on Israeli civilians, now including seven suicide bombings in the past week. The trigger was an attack at the start of the Passover holiday that killed 26 Israelis attending a Seder, a ritual meal, in a hotel.

Since then, Israeli forces have taken over six major West Bank towns and cities _ Ramallah, Qalqiliya, Jenin, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, Nablus _ and have arrested more than 1,100 Palestinians. The towns of Jericho and Hebron remained the last islands of Palestinian control in the West Bank.

The incursion into Nablus began late Wednesday, with dozens of tanks rolling into the city of 180,000. Gunmen took refuge in Nablus’s Casbah, or old city, and in four adjacent refugee camps, where alleys are too narrow to allow tanks to enter.

A Palestinian man was killed by Israeli fire when he opened a window in his apartment in Nablus, Palestinian security officials said. Amar Yassin, a resident of downtown Nablus, said more than 80 armored vehicles were deployed in and around the main square and soldiers took over high-rise buildings.

The heaviest fighting raged in the Jenin refugee camp, a militant stronghold where hundreds of gunmen were holed up. Israeli commandos moved house-to-house, under fire cover from helicopters and tanks.

At a nearby army command center, officers had an aerial photo of the camp pinned on the inside of a canvas tent. By Thursday morning, about 30 percent of the homes had been marked as having been searched or taken over by troops.

Over walkie-talkies, soldiers in the camp called for helicopter fire on a particular house. The commander of the operation, Brig. Gen. Eyal Shlein, said he would consider the raid a success when gunmen had been killed or taken captive.

“When I get to every single spot in the refugee camp … and we’ve killed a few, that’s how I will know (it was a success),” Shlein said. “We are not leaving any escape routes.”

Palestinians in the camp said three gunmen were killed in the fighting, and that armed men had surrounded two buildings taken over by Israeli troops.

Gunmen in the camp said they believed this was their last stand, judging by the tough army sweeps through other West Bank towns. Armed men had prepared large numbers of homemade bombs for the Israeli raid of Jenin, the seventh in 18 months of fighting. Ali Safouri, a militia leader, said he and his men were trying to make every bullet count. “We use it for sniping only, we are not shooting in all directions,” Safouri said in a telephone interview.

The standoff at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity began Tuesday, the day Israeli forces seized the biblical town. After several hours of heavy fighting around Manger Square, dozens of gunmen ran into the basilica and, according to witnesses, forced their way inside, where they remain along with several dozen clergy.

A video of the incident, released Thursday by the Israeli military, showed the gunmen, a dozen at a time, running from the nearby Palace Hotel into the church, their heavy footfalls splashing puddles under slashing rain. “One at a time,” shouted one of the men. Wearing military vests and boots and carrying rifles, each ran as another turned and provided cover, wildly shooting an assault rifle.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said troops would not storm the church, but army officials said the gunmen would not be allowed to go free.

On Thursday, Palestinians inside the church said Israeli troops blew open a back door leading into a small courtyard adjacent to the church. Mazen Hassan, a Palestinian policeman, said soldiers fired into the courtyard, wounding three people.

Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, an Israeli army spokesman, denied soldiers were in the church compound. Other military officials said there was shooting in nearby Manger Square, and that troops were pursuing gunmen.

Rafowicz said Israel has been offering safe passage out of the church for anyone wishing it, and that Palestinian officials holed up inside “are preventing the people from leaving.”

The priests inside have been reluctant to answer questions about their situation.

Father Ibrahim Faltas, the superior of the Franciscan community in the church, said food supplies had run low. `The situation is critical. Please help us,” the priest told the Vatican news agency by telephone. Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the top Roman Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land, said mediation efforts were under way.

Elsewhere in Bethlehem, army footage showed about a dozen gunmen surrendering, coming out of a house one at a time and holding rifles over their heads as several members of the International Committee of the Red Cross watched.

Soldiers looked down from tanks and armored vehicles, while other troops grabbed rifles from the men and lined them up on their knees, with their hands on top of their heads. Looking on, one of the international workers, sought to calm the soldiers and the gunmen, saying slowly in a shaky voice, “We’re OK. We’re OK.”