Dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rolled into the southern outskirts of Palestinian-ruled Gaza City early on Thursday, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said. They said the tanks entered the As-Sabra area of the Gaza Strip's main city and took up positions about 150 meters (yards) from the home of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of the militant Islamic group Hamas, before pulling back.

Occasional shooting and one loud explosion echoed through the streets as residents took cover in their homes.

Two Palestinian policemen and a local resident were wounded, and a Palestinian preventive security officer and his three brothers were arrested in their home, the security sources said.

Israel has also sent tanks and troops into the West Bank cities of Nablus and Tulkarm this week on raids which it says are intended to root out resistance activists after a Palestinian resistance man killed five Israeli settlers at a kibbutz in northern Israel on Sunday.

The occupation army said the troops arrested about 30 wanted resistance activists in Nablus, mostly from Hamas. Israeli war Minister Shaul Mofaz said occupation troops were looking for resistance activists suspected of involvement in Sunday's attack on Kibbutz Metzer, an internationally illegal collective settlers farm.

LATEST VICTIM OF ISRAELI ATROCITIES

Israel tightened a military clampdown on much of the West Bank in April to try to quell the Palestinian uprising in which at least 1,656 Palestinians and 631 Israelis have been killed since the intifadha, uprising against occupation, began in September 2000.

The latest victim was a two-year-old Palestinian boy, Hamed al-Masri. His father and other witnesses said he was shot dead and his mother was wounded as the family fled its home in Rafah refugee camp in Gaza on Wednesday when shooting began nearby.

IS YASSIN BEING TARGETED?

It was not clear whether the wheelchair-bound Yassin was at home but aides say he often spends the night elsewhere as a precaution.

Yassin, 66, has been confined to a wheelchair since childhood. Born in an Arab fishing village near what is now the Israeli town of Ashkelon, Yassin was in his teens when Israel was created in 1948. He fled and became a refugee in the Gaza Strip, where he founded Hamas in 1987

The Israeli occupation army has been trying to rein in Hamas, which has carried out a series of resistance bombings in the two-year-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.

However, occupation army sources did not try to approach Yassin's home and according to the sources the target of the raid appeared to be Youssef Al-Meqdradi, a major in the preventive occupation army forces who was arrested and led blindfolded from his home with three brothers.

The sources said he was suspected of having ties with a Palestinian resistance group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

US OFFICIALS RESIGNED TO SLOW PROGRESS IN MIDEAST PEACE TALKS

The attack, the raids and sporadic violence have added to problems besetting a fresh U.S. peace mission that has been overshadowed by a stormy Israeli election campaign and the possibility of a U.S.-led war to disarm Iraq.

In Washington, U.S. officials said they were resigned to slow progress in Middle East talks at least until the scheduled Israeli election on January 28.

But the United States will continue to work on the incomplete Middle East "road map" which has been at the center of international mediation between Israelis and Palestinians since the middle of this year, they added.

A quartet of would-be peacebrokers -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- have been trying to secure Israeli and Palestinian agreement on a three-year plan leading to Palestinian statehood.

But the violence, and the collapse of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national unity government, have slowed down the process.

U.S. envoy David Satterfield is in the region discussing the "roadmap" to peace, which prescribes reciprocal measures leading to a Palestinian state in 2005. Palestinians have accepted the plan in principle but say it lacks enforcement clauses.

Israel says it is short on provisions to rein in Palestinian resistance activists.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian boy searches the rubble of a metal workshop in Gaza which was destroyed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired missiles into it, November 13, 2002. Dozens of Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships swept into the West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday in a stepped-up military response to a Palestinian resistance attack that killed five Israeli settlers on a kibbutz. REUTERS/Reinhard Krau