Unleashing a military assault on the Palestinian Authority's President Yasser Arafat, Israel yesterday blew up his helicopters in their Gaza City hangars. It was the first retaliation for the weekend suicide bombings that killed 26 Israelis.
Palestinian officials reported that 17 people were injured, and Mr Arafat's entire compound was evacuated, in the 20-minute attack by four Israeli Apache helicopters. Mr Arafat, who was in the West Bank town of Ramallah at the time, described the strike as "a humiliation of the Palestinian people".
In a second raid last night, in the West Bank town of Jenin, Israeli aircraft blew up a Palestinian Authority offices and police building.
Later, Israeli tanks advanced to around 500 metres from Mr Arafat's offices in Ramallah early today, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said.
They said that the tanks rolled into El _Birch, a Palestinian self-rule area on the edge of Ramallah, as Israeli helicopters hovered overhead.
Witnesses also reported that around 40 Israeli tanks were headed towards the town of Nablus, in the West Bank, while three tanks moved into the village of Iktaba, near the town of Tulkarem, and occupied a building.
Earlier, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian farmer in the same area - saying later they feared he was going to attack them. In further violence, two members of Mr Arafat's Force 17 unit were killed last night in an explosion in Bethlehem. Israel said it was not responsible and suggested the pair had been blown up by a bomb they were preparing.
Making clear that last night's strikes were only an initial response to what he said would be a long struggle against Mr Arafat's "war of terrorism", the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, convened his ministers to decide on further "new measures".
Apparently seeking to draw a distinction between the Palestinian Authority in general and its president, Mr Sharon asserted that Mr Arafat had chosen a "strategy of terrorism" to try and "force us out of our country", and he described the one-time Israeli peace partner as "the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East"
Palestinian officials appealed to the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to intervene, and Mr Arafat was said to be trying to arrange an Arab League summit. Mr Nabil Amr, one of Mr Arafat's most senior colleagues, said Mr Sharon was evidently bent on "an eternal war" with the Palestinians. Other ministers in the authority expressed dismay at what they said was tacit US approval for the Israeli military action.
President Bush held talks with Mr Sharon at the White House on Sunday, and while urging Mr Arafat to take resolute action against the Islamic extremists behind the suicide bombings, gave no public indication that he was seeking to restrain the Israeli prime minister. A senior official was quoted in Washington last night as describing the raids as an Israeli "warning shot" rather than the start of an all-out war.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, and Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, both members of the moderate Labour Party, had made clear they opposed the strikes.
International reaction to Israeli strikes: page 11; Editorial comment: page 15