Jebalya, Gaza Strip ? Israel F-16 warplanes attacked a Palestinian police compound Friday in the Gaza Strip, a day after three Israeli soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on a tank.

Three explosions went off and a fire broke out in the compound in the town of Jebalya, about 3 miles north of Gaza City, witnesses said. First reports said at least 15 people were wounded, 10 of them policemen.

There was no comment from the Israeli military.

The deaths Thursday of the three soldiers and the accidental death of an elite Israeli undercover commander were considered a serious blow to the Israeli military, which had suffered relatively few casualties during the past 16 months of fighting.

The attack on the Merkava-3 tank, one of the most heavily armored tanks in the world, marked the first time that Palestinians destroyed a major piece of Israeli military hardware. It was a feat even the better-trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon never achieved in 18 years of fighting Israeli forces.

Israeli columnist Rafi Mann said the Palestinians targeted a symbol of Israeli power. “It’s as if the terrorists, with their Kalashnikov rifles and homemade rockets, had succeeded in shooting down an F-16 warplane,” he wrote in the Maariv daily.

The Israeli officer, Lt. Col. Eyal Weiss, died when a wall collapsed on him during a pre-dawn raid on the West Bank village of Saida, near the town of Tulkarem, the military said. Weiss commanded the Duvdevan undercover unit, whose members often enter Palestinian territories in disguise to arrest suspected militants.

Meanwhile, the top Palestinian official in Jerusalem, Sari Nusseibeh, said that if Israel pulled its tanks back in the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon invited Arafat to peace talks, “in 24 hours there’ll be no violence.”

However, Sharon adviser Daniel Ayalon called the appeal a “gimmick.” He said Israel had tried this before, easing restrictions and opening roadblocks, “and terrorists entered right away.”