TEL AVIV, Feb 15: Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian in a raid on Friday after an unprecedented bomb attack destroyed an Israeli tank and killed three soldiers on Thursday.

Just after dawn, Israeli forces swept into two Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank, killing one man and arresting six others in what the army said was a sweep for guerillas involved in attacks on Israelis.

Late on Friday night, Israeli war planes launched two air raids on Gaza City and near the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, injuring five policemen.

The second attack, which was carried out between Beit Lahia and the Jabaliya refugee camp targeted the public security headquarters.

The Israeli army said a colonel leading an elite commando unit died when a wall collapsed on him after troops demolished a house where a guerilla was holed up. The Islamic Jihad group said the officer was killed during a clash with its activists.

The incursions followed a coordinated attack in the Gaza Strip on Thursday night in which Palestinians ambushed a Jewish settler convoy, apparently to lure an Israeli tank into a trap.

A heavily armoured Merkava-3 tank sent to the scene ran over a bomb, setting off a blast that split it apart and knocked off its turret, Israeli military sources said. Three crew members were killed and one was wounded.

It was the first time Palestinians have destroyed an Israeli-made Merkava-3, an advanced armoured vehicle considered a symbol of the Jewish state’s military prowess.

Claimed by a coalition of groups calling itself the Salahudin Brigade, the attack was reminiscent of Hezbollah operations in Lebanon before Israel withdrew in May 2000.

It could force a re-evaluation of tactics by the army, which has deployed tanks in Palestinian areas with impunity during the nearly 17-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.

“This is a new development in resisting Israeli tanks,” said Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior official of the Hamas. “The resistance will continue until Israeli troops withdraw from Palestinian lands.”

Captain Assaf Liberty, an Israeli army spokesman, called it a “professional bomb” and said the “transfer of knowledge (from Hezbollah) in Lebanon supplied the ability to make it”.

“We did not know of its existence,” he said.

The tank bombing was a new source of alarm for Israelis, already reeling from Palestinians’ first use of a relatively primitive rocket capable of reaching Israeli cities.

Early on Friday, tanks raided Palestinian-ruled Saida in the West Bank. The army said its forces came under fire and killed one Islamic Jihad man and arrested five others. Palestinian witnesses said the 28-year-old man was shot dead while fleeing.

Troops also entered the village of Jaba and arrested two Islamic Jihad guerillas, the army said.

AIR STRIKE: Meanwhile, a member of the Palestinian security forces, was killed on Friday night in an Israeli air strike on the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabaliya which also injured another 17, Palestinian security sources said.—Reuters/AFP