NABLUS, West Bank (AFP) - Ten Palestinians, including a young schoolgirl, were killed in separate army raids in the West Bank as Israel tightened security for the beginning of the Jewish new year holiday.
Six people, including the 11-year-old girl, were killed during an early morning offensive in the main northern city of Nablus before four militants were shot dead when special forces swooped on a garage in the nearby town of Jenin, Palestinian medical and security sources said.
The victims of the Nablus operation, four of whom were members of a group loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were shot dead after troops had encircled a house in the Old City area.
Around 20 jeeps and tanks took part in the operation, with aerial cover from an Israeli helicopter.
"A soldier on lookout had spotted a group of armed Palestinians who then forced their way into a house owned by an 80-year-old man," the army`s regimental commander in Nablus told AFP.
"We called on them to surrender but they refused and then tried to flee from the house, opening fire," added the colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Four of the dead were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs` Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat`s Fatah movement, while the fifth militant was a follower of the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The young girl, Maram al-Nahleh, was hit by gunfire when she went out of her house as ambulances arrived, medics and relatives said.
"She was watching the ambulances taking away the bodies when soldiers posted on the roof of a house shot at her, hitting her in the face," the girl`s grandmother, Mouyassar Al-Nahleh, told AFP.
After news of the killings began to filter through the city, clashes broke out between the soldiers and groups of stone-throwers.
Ten Palestinians were wounded during the clashes, including a 14-year-old boy who was in a serious condition in hospital, medics said.
Four more Al-Aqsa Brigades fighters were killed several hours later in a raid by Israeli special forces in the flashpoint town of Jenin.
The soldiers gunned down the four men in a garage in an industrial zone in the north of the town, Palestinian medical and security sources said.
An Israeli military source confirmed that four Palestinian gunmen were killed and another two militants arrested, adding that a number of firearms had been retrieved.
Jenin is the birthplace and stronghold of the Brigades which has been behind a string of anti-Israeli attacks during the four-year Palestinian uprising, or intifada.
Three members of the faction were killed just two days ago in Jenin during an Israeli air strike on their car, prompting the group to dispatch a suicide bomber who wounded two Israeli soldiers when he blew himself up on Tuesday.
The latest wave of killings has pushed the overall toll since the start of the intifada to 4,317, including 3,303 Palestinians and 943 Israelis.
Arafat said that the latest killings were only the latest in a long line of crimes committed against the Palestinian people.
"This is another unforgiveable crime against our people, against our cities, our refugee camps, our sacred lands but the Palestinian people will continue to be committed to the peace process," he told reporters.
Amid fears of possible reprisals, Israel has imposed a general closure on the Palestinian territories for the start of the Jewish new year holiday, which was to begin at sundown Wednesday.
Police and army reinforcements have been deployed on the streets of the major cities in Israel to man mobile checkpoints.
In a series of newspaper interviews ahead of the new year holiday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been ramming home the message that his controversial Gaza pullout plan will be implemented come what may, rebuffing calls for the project to be subjected to a referendum.
But a poll published by the Maariv daily on Wednesday showed that 69 percent of people want a referendum while only 26 percent believe that a vote in parliament would be sufficient.
Asked how they would vote if there were a referendum, 58 percent said that they would vote in favour while 29 percent said they would oppose it.
The survey was published a day after Sharon`s inner cabinet approved a package of compensation for the 8,000 settlers in Gaza and residents of four small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank who are due to be uprooted next year.