Israeli Troops Assault Refugee Camps

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - Backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, Israeli troops launched a major assault on two West Bank refugee camps Thursday, a first in 17 months of fighting. Nine Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in heavy gun battles, and more than 90 Palestinians were wounded, doctors said.
The military said the Balata and Jenin camps were strongholds of Palestinian militants, and that Thursday's operation was intended to show that "there is no refuge for terror." A militia leader said his men would die rather than surrender.
The fighting came just hours after Saudi Arabia presented its new peace initiative in a world forum for the first time. Under the proposal, the Arab world would make peace with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.
Also late Wednesday, a Palestinian woman with an explosives belt blew herself up near an Israeli checkpoint. Dareen Abu Aisheh, a 21-year-old English literature student at An Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus, was the second woman to do that since the fighting began in September 2000. Three Israeli policemen as well as two Palestinians who were in a car with Abu Aisheh were hurt in the incident.