HEBRON, West Bank, 29 June — The Israeli Army stormed the Palestinian Authority police headquarters in the West Bank city of Hebron last evening, witnesses said, in an apparent bid to end a standoff with suspected men inside. Witnesses said soldiers could be seen moving through the building with torches and that six army trucks filled with soldiers, and around 30 jeeps and APCs had arrived to reinforce troops ringing the complex.

The army said it was checking the report. It had announced earlier there would be no negotiations with the gunmen but also that there were no immediate plans to storm the building in order to flush out 15 armed Palestinians it said were inside.

Tank shells punctured the perimeter wall of the building and bulldozers moved in to widen the holes earlier in the day. Hebron is the seventh West Bank city reoccupied and put under curfew by the army after a series of bombings.

Earlier, in the day, Israeli Army bulldozed its way into a Palestinian Authority office compound to force out suspected activists hidden there, while a lone Palestinian negotiator, who searched the premises, said he found no one inside.

As the siege of the local Hebron administrative and security complex entered its fourth day, Israeli troops carried sweeping arrests on the West Bank, nabbing dozens of Palestinian activists. Two children, aged seven and 11, were shot and wounded by soldiers who fired at stone throwers by the Dheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem, said Palestinian medical sources.

And in Gaza City, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin led an anti-US protest of more than 1,000 people, despite being put under house arrest on Monday by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in reaction to US and Israeli demands he rein in militants.

"I was informed of no house arrest order. I went out of my house behaving normally and no one stopped me," the 66-year-old, white-bearded Yassin told reporters during the demonstration. Yassin was in a car driven among Palestinians backing various nationalist and Islamic groups in a march protesting at the 35th anniversary of East Jerusalem’s annexation by Israel after a Middle East war, a step not recognized internationally.

"We are here to say that we will sacrifice our souls and blood for Jerusalem," said Yassin, with bodyguards clutching AK-47 assault rifles flanking the car. "Whoever defends his land is not a terrorist. America supports terrorism."

"It is not defiance of the Palestinian Authority because no one told the Sheikh he could leave his house," senior Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi told reporters. At the rally, Yassin urged Arab countries to "prepare their armies and launch a war of liberation for Jerusalem".

Protesters denounced a Middle East policy speech by US President George W. Bush in which he branded Hamas and Islamic Jihad "terrorist groups" and said the Arafat-led Palestinian Authority was tainted by violence and must be replaced if Palestinians were to realize their aspirations of statehood. "We did not expect Bush to praise us. Hamas will continue to fight the Zionists until the occupation ends," Rantissi said.

At the besieged building complex, former Palestinian Cabinet minister Talal Sadr told reporters he "did not find anyone during his tour" of the imposing three-story Hebron building where military sources says militants are hiding. "The ‘moqataa’ is very big," Sadr said, using the Arabic word for the seat of the Palestinian Authority.

He said he planned to return to the building after consulting with other Palestinian negotiators. Sadr, acting without any official mandate, walked alone through the Israeli Army line and climbing over rubble to enter the building through a gaping 100-wide hole, where the main entrance once stood.

On Thursday, Sadr and Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natshe told reporters that contacts were under way with the Israeli Army to end the standoff around the Palestinian building. But both said the talks fell through after Israel refused to allow any involvement by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The army has pounded the building like a punching bag since Thursday, with tank fire and a heavy-duty bulldozer, destroying the ground level and working their way up to the first floor, AFP correspondents said. Soldiers also tried to break down a side wall of the huge building that was built during the British mandate and which once served as an interrogation and detention center by the Israeli Army.

The soldiers, using loudspeakers, yesterday morning ordered the activists out of the building within an hour, but the wanted men ignored the call as they had in previous days, witnesses said. But there were no signs of any imminent assault and by late afternoon an eerie calm had settled around the building.

"We are patient. Sooner or later they will come out," Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer told Israeli military radio in the morning. The army has blockaded the building since first moving into Hebron late Tuesday as part of an operation to reoccupy key West Bank cities.

The army now controls seven of the West Bank’s eight main towns under what Israel calls "Operation Determined Path" launched last week. The troops are trying to flush out between 15 and 20 wanted men holed up inside, according to military sources cited on Israeli public radio.

In sweeping arrests across the West Bank, the army nabbed 35 Palestinian men yesterday, including at least 10 Palestinians taken from Azmout, a village east of Nablus, when troops backed by tanks and a helicopter stormed in. Witnesses said the army imposed a curfew and combed the village for several hours, taking among other Raed Amer, the head of a prisoners’ rights association linked to the Palestinian Authority.

Soldiers also arrested 19 other Palestinians, including members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, and from Arafat’s Fatah movement in the Bethlehem district, security sources said.

Almost 600,000 Palestinians were confined to their homes under curfew in West Bank cities and many more were confined to surrounding villages by army operations.

A photograph of a Palestinian baby dressed up like a suicide bomber, complete with explosives belt, was published in Israeli newspapers yesterday. The army said the photograph was found in a family album in a Hebron house searched by troops.