GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces backed by 30 tanks and three helicopters stormed early today into central Gaza City, the deepest incursion into the city in more than two years, Palestinian security officials and witnesses said.
Soldiers fired machine guns as they penetrated roughly more than a mile into the city from its southern entrance, witnesses said.
The army declined immediate comment.
The army rolled into the central Talalhawa neighborhood, in an area that is home to the headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security and the studios of Palestinian state television.
There were no immediate reports of injuries, but at least a dozen ambulances rushed to the area.
In a pre-dawn strike a day earlier, Israeli helicopters fired four missiles on a suspected weapons-making workshop in the city center, the second such strike on the site in two days.
The attack demolished an automotive repair shop whose owner insisted had nothing to do with the manufacture of weapons. Israel said that the site was believed to produce mortar shells and rockets like ones used in recent attacks on nearby Israeli communities.
On Wednesday, Israeli troops rolled into Nablus in dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, rounding up 30 suspected Palestinian militants.
The West Bank's largest city is a hotbed for militants, and troops have been in and out for the past seven months.
The Israeli invasion of Nablus was triggered by a Sunday shooting at an Israeli communal farm in which five people, including two small boys, were killed by a gunman from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to Arafat's Fatah group. The attacker managed to flee the scene.
Israeli officials identified the gunman as Sirhan Sirhan, a 19-year-old from the Tulkarem refugee camp.
Officials initially said they believed he was a distant relative of the assassin by the same name who killed presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968 :quot; but later withdrew that claim.
Relatives of the suspected gunman said they had no blood ties to the Kennedy assassin, who came from the predominantly Christian village of Taibeh in the West Bank. The Sirhans in the Tulkarem camp are Muslims.
Israel declared Nablus a closed military zone, and soldiers barred journalists from taking pictures or talking to those rounded up. The army said 30 suspected militants were arrested.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat denounced the Nablus raid as a "new war crime."
Meanwhile, in talks on Wednesday in Cairo, Egypt, there was no sign the Fatah movement was able to persuade the militant Islamic group Hamas to halt its suicide attacks against Israel.
The two sides "agreed that resistance and political struggle are legitimate rights for the Palestinian people to achieve the goal of establishing a Palestinian state," said Zakria Agha, the head of the Fatah delegation.
He declined to comment when asked about the discussions on suicide bombings.
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