OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 22 June — Israel decided yesterday to press ahead with its reoccupation of West Bank self-rule towns, as 10 more Palestinians, including 4 children, were killed by the Israeli Army. The hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s security Cabinet decided troops would remain inside Palestinian self-rule towns as long as it takes to put an end to bombings and shooting rampages, government sources said.

The Palestinian Authority later in the evening called for swift US and international intervention in the escalating Middle East conflict amid concern over Israel’s vow to pursue its reoccupation of Palestinian towns on the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority leadership renewed its call for an international observers in the occupied territories. "We ask for the urgent sending of a international observer force in the territories to ensure the safety of the population," the leadership said in a statement carried by the official WAFA news agency.

It expressed its surprise at the "silence of the international community in the face of repeated Israeli attacks against the Palestinians." Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also called for "immediate" US and international intervention to end the Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian towns. The comments came after reports the Israeli security Cabinet decided to pursue its reoccupation of all Palestinian towns on the West Bank.

Atrocities and despair have engulfed the region anew, overshadowing the latest frail American diplomatic initiative even before President George Bush has unveiled it to the outside world, and deepening the gulf that separates both combatants. In 72 hours, three Palestinian attacks — two suicide bombings and a raid Thursday on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank — have cost 31 Israeli lives, as well as two soldiers killed in fighting in the West Bank. On the Palestinian side, the death toll rose to 17 since Tuesday.

Israeli troops had taken over all or parts of six of the main West Bank Palestinian towns by yesterday, but the army’s presence appeared only to fuel the bloodshed.

Although the cycle of violence has stalled a US peace initiative, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat issued a call for "no more war" and said he believed he could reach a peace agreement with hard-liner Sharon. In an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, Arafat said that "enough is enough" and that he now accepted a framework for peace first made by former US President Bill Clinton.

On the ground, five Palestinians, all but one of them children, were killed by Israeli troops as Palestinians resisted Israeli offensive in Jenin, site of some of the heaviest military operations in the 21-month-old conflict. In a rare admission, the army admitted its tanks had wrongly opened fire, causing civilian deaths.

Violence raged across the occupied territories, with four Palestinians also killed in Gaza and the army pouring into Nablus, hours after a gunman killed five Israelis in a nearby settlement. The gunman was shot dead by soldiers, the army said.

As one horror follows another with barely any interval, the focus switched yesterday to Jenin, a Palestinian town that has been repeatedly invaded by the Israeli Army. Israeli tanks raked Jenin downtown with shells, medical sources said. Some struck more than a kilometer to the north, killing four Palestinians, medical sources said. "An initial inquiry indicates that the (Israeli) force erred in its action," an army statement said.

Soldiers in Jenin also blew up a building which they said was a workshop for the production of explosives. The army opened tank fire on a group of people who "broke the curfew" on the city of Jenin, where soldiers were carrying out "house to house searches in search of an explosive lab," the army said. Before dawn, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and five members of his family wounded in Jenin when Israeli soldiers blew up a house close to their own, a Palestinian hospital source said. The army rounded up 400 Palestinian men aged between 15 and 50 in the village of Wadi Birkin near Jenin and took them to a nearby military base, Palestinian security sources said.

The Nablus reoccupation was part of Israel’s new policy of grabbing Palestinian land. The army is already occupying five other West Bank towns: Jenin, Qalqilya, Beitunia, Bethlehem and Tulkarm. The move on Nablus was followed by a skirmish in the Gaza Strip, when border guards killed three Palestinians standing near the Erez crossing point into Israel. And a boy died after being hit in the chest by heavy machine-gun fire that strafed his house south of Gaza City.

A mob of Itamar settlers attacked the village of Huwara south of Nablus and gunned down Adnan Odeh, 22, as they returned from the funeral for the five dead settlers, medical sources said. Settlers from Yitzhar late yesterday afternoon entered the village of Burin, near Nablus, and killed a Palestinian as they set fire to two houses, Palestinian sources said. In addition to Nablus and Jenin, large armored forces also continued operating in Bethlehem, Tulkarm, and the southern Ramallah suburb of Beitunya. (The Independent)