Four police shot dead in Israeli army raid

The Israeli army launched a night-time raid on an Arab village, shooting dead four policemen, setting fire to one house and dynamiting another, and arresting several dozen residents.

The assault on Anabta, in the northern West Bank, included tanks and helicopters and was still under way yesterday morning when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a bus stop 30 miles away. Severely injured, he was shot dead by Israeli police before he could detonate a second bomb in his bag.

Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, pointedly convened his weekly cabinet meeting at the armed forces' headquarters in the occupied West Bank, and announced that his country would "apparently" have to step up its military operations.

The assault on Anabta resembled the Israeli army's invasion of Beit Rima in October, when the army shot dead five policemen, several of whom were running away when they were killed.

But attention yesterday focused on the suicide bomber, who injured 11 people near Haifa but killed no one ­ even though he had two bombs.

Residents of Anabta, a village of 8,000 spread over the low hills east of Tulkarm, spoke of a terrifying raid, in which Israeli forces poured in late at night with tanks and armoured vehicles and soldiers forced men from the village to strip to their underwear and stand in the street while the buildings were searched. Gouge-marks from tank tracks were visible on roads running through the centre of the village, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Villagers showed a villa and a clothes-making factory that had clearly been ransacked, another home that had been burnt down, and a third stone house ­ built on the roof of another building ­ that had been blown up. Several men showed their hands, on which their names and house numbers had been written in indelible ink by their interrogators ­ red for suspects' families, green for the neighbours of suspects.

But the most disturbing scenes were to be found on a narrow road leading to an infants' school on a hilltop, where the four men were killed. Shattered windscreen glass lay strewn around the asphalt. Rings of rocks had been laid around the large pools of gore left by the dead policemen, all in their twenties.

A spokesman for the Israeli armed forces said that the Palestinians were killed as they tried to flee the village in two vehicles after opening fire on soldiers. But ­ like many of the explanations for violence offered by both sides ­ that reeked of implausibility.

It was clear from the scene ­ and the bullet holes peppering the sides of their vehicles ­ that the men died in or close to their cars, a blue police Renault Kangoo van and a white Subaru. Six men were in the car. Two survived.

To fire on Israeli forces from inside cars on an exposed road, with army helicopters in the area, would have been mass suicide. This does not appear to have been their plan: beside their beds in the infants' school, where they have taken to sleeping for fear of Israeli attacks on their headquarters, lay a large bag of fresh pitta bread ­ apparently ready for the pre-dawn breakfast taken during Ramadan.

"They were ambushed by Israeli troops," said Yasser Abed al-Dayem, 38, who said he witnessed the shootings from his nearby house. "They never shot a single bullet at the Israelis. Afterwards, the army took them out of the cars, and lay them bleeding on the road. An Israeli ambulance tried to give them first aid."

The Israeli army also said accusingly that pistols and Kalashnikov rifles were found in the vehicles ­ hardly surprising, as Palestinian policemen are usually armed. Hamdallah Hamdallah, the village mayor, said: "They were killed in cold blood. They were trying to get away but, after 15 metres, the Israeli army shot up their cars."

Islamic militant groups, after talks with the Palestinian Authority, said they were considering making an offer to halt attacks within Israel if the Israelis stopped their strikes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A senior Israeli security official said Israel had no choice but to continue to "act in self-defence" as long as the Palestinian Authority failed to "fight terrorism and make arrests".