Jenin Refugee Camp, West Bank ? Israel’s Supreme Court told the army Sunday that it must give the Palestinians the bodies of those killed in Jenin’s refugee camp, a move that could help clear up the escalating dispute over how many Palestinians died in the fierce fighting.

Also, the army gave journalists a limited tour of the devastated camp and rejected Palestinian claims that hundreds of people, many of them civilians, were killed. The army said it has found fewer than 40 bodies after searching half of the camp, and most of those corpses belong to Palestinian gunmen.

The court also ordered the army to include workers from the Red Cross in teams searching for the bodies following more than a week of battles in the camp, the site of the heaviest combat since Israeli troops launched a West Bank offensive March 29 to track militants responsible for attacks on its civilians.

Sunday’s court decision comes amid Palestinian accusations that Israel has been secretly burying Palestinians in mass graves. The petition to the Supreme Court was filed by Arab Israelis who said Israel was attempting to hide the number of dead.

It has been impossible to confirm the death toll. Palestinians officials and medical groups have not been allowed into the camp, but claim the death toll is in the hundreds.

The army, which suffered 23 deaths among its soldiers in the camp, had been saying that about 100 Palestinians were killed, most of them gunmen, and that it wanted to bury the militants in unmarked graves in a cemetery in northern Israel.

Col. Dan Riesner, an adviser to the army’s advocate-general who was present at Sunday’s court hearing, said the bodies of 37 Palestinians, including at least 23 young men believed to be gunmen, had been found in a search of half of the camp.

Of the 37 bodies, Riesner said at least 26 were left where they were found pending the court action and also because of fears they may be booby-trapped. Israeli officials said 11 civilian bodies were turned over to relatives or hospitals, and were buried.

Israel has declared the Jenin refugee camp a closed military zone, though some journalists, including several from The Associated Press, have managed to get inside over the past four days.

The army on Sunday gave a group of journalists a tour of part of the camp, which was home to some 15,000 Palestinians.

The powerful stench of sewage mixed with garbage strewn on the camp’s narrow alleyways. Bullet casings littered the streets and alleyways, sitting in the midst of shattered glass and shards of rubble. Walls bore Hebrew letters and numbers, the work of the Israeli army to mark the roads. Alongside them were slogans of the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Elsewhere in the camp, entire floors of apartment blocs had tumbled, with the few walls left standing pockmarked with shell and bullet holes.