Israel imposed a complete ban on Palestinian travel in most of the West Bank and used tanks to seal off part of the Gaza Strip today in retaliation for Palestinian attacks that killed 13 people in 24 hours.
A total of 18 people died during the period, including the Palestinian suicide bomber and four other Palestinians shot by Israeli forces.
Israeli further tightened its blockade of Palestinian areas after one of the worst days of bloodshed in recent weeks left Israelis reeling and dashed hopes for a resumption of political dialogue between the two sides. The latest spiral of violence, which began yesterday with a suicide bombing that killed nine people on a bus in northern Israel followed by a deadly shooting spree in Jerusalem, showed no signs of let-up today.A Palestinian gunman shot at the car of a Jewish settler family driving towards the West Bank city of Ramallah before dawn, killing the parents and wounding their children, aged three years and six months, the army said.An armed offshoot of Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement claimed an ambush. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said in a statement they killed Mr Avi Volanski (29) and his pregnant wife Avital (27) as "revenge for the blood of our martyrs and a response to the policy of killing and Zionist terror."Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men, one of them a wanted militant, during a hunt for suspected attackers overnight in the West Bank village of Burqa.Israel responded by banning travel between most major cities in the West Bank and cordoning off the town of Rafah and its refugee camp, frequent flashpoints during a 22-month-old Palestinian uprising, in the southern Gaza Strip."We are in a situation of total closure in the northern West Bank. No one goes in or out," Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel radio."We will continue with a long series of measures which I cannot speak of now whose aim is to implement a much wider closure than we are doing now," he said.The new measures appeared aimed at mollifying an Israeli public increasingly nervous about the army's failure to halt Palestinian violence even though troops have reoccupied seven of the eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, condemned the latest Israeli moves and called on the international community to force an Israeli pullout."No doubt the Palestinian suffering demands an immediate international intervention because of the humanitarian catastrophe of the people," he told Reuters.Following yesterday's attacks, Israel suspended talks due this week with Palestinians on security and easing hardships.But Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres went ahead with talks in Egypt today with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was expected to press demands for a quick Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas.