Israeli occupation troops and armour surged into Hebron, slapping a curfew on the West Bank city and carrying out house-to-house searches, while Israeli right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to corral the Labour party into a national unity coalition.Israeli public radio said the operation, which could last several days, came in response to a series of attacks in the Hebron and the surrounding areas which have killed 22 occupation soldiers and Jewish settlers since November.

Security officials said five Palestinians had been detained in Hebron and its surrounding villages as around 20 armoured vehicles deployed in the centre of the city of more than 120,000 people.

And Palestinian officials said the occupation troops had also shut down a television and two radio stations.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz warned earlier this month that the occupation army would crack down in the Hebron area, where Palestinian resistance activists have carried out a number of bloody attacks on Jewish settlers and the occupation soldiers protecting them.

Around 600 hardline settlers live under massive Israeli occupation army protection in Hebron, surrounded by around 120,000 Palestinians.

The raid came just two days after Sharon was returned to office -- the first premier to be re-elected since the 1980s -- on a renewed pledge to break the 28-month Palestinian uprising that has cost close to 3,000 lives, some three quarters of them Palestinians.

Sharon used his uncompromising refusal to open talks with the Palestinians until they down their weapons and drop leader Yasser Arafat to inflict a historic defeat on the centre-left Labour, which promised to renew peace talks and vastly scale back settlements in the territories.

Despite his resounding win, snatching 37 out of 120 parliamentary seats, Sharon has to build a stable coalition to steer the country out of the bloody conflict and the worst economic crisis in its 54-year history.

His overarching goal is to lure Labour into a national unity government, together with the secular centre-right Shinui party which made massive gains in Tuesday's vote with a campaign against the privileges enjoyed by the country's ultra-Orthodox Jews.

But Labour's dovish leader Amram Mitzna has refused to join any coalition headed by his hardline rival, refusing to repeat the party's 22-month cohabitation which ended in last October's Labour walk-out and precipitated the early elections.

If Sharon fails to woo Labour, he will have to base his government on Shiunui and tougher right-wing factions, as Shinui has refused to join any long-term government with the extremely religious Shas party, a traditional kingmaker in Israeli coalition-building.

Sharon fears a far-right government could limit his room for manouevre if the United States exerts pressure on Israel to tackle the crisis after an expected confrontation with Iraq, in particular forcing Israel to dismantle some settlements in the occupied territories.

A far-right coalition with a small majority of fractious minor parties would make for a bumpy ride for the 74-year-old former general, and could plunge the country into new elections, analysts predict.

Press reports Thursday said Sharon planned to "corner" Labour by raising the spectre of a new vote shortly after elections which opinion polls showed were not welcomed by the majority of Israelis, who want to see a united front in the drawn-out crisis.

He also intends to use the looming threat of war with Iraq, and the risk of Scud missiles hitting Israel as they did in the 1991 Gulf War, to turn up the heat on Labour.

Press reports Thursday said Labour veteran Shimon Peres, who served as Sharon's foreign minister until the unity government collapsed last October, had called on his ailing party to hear what Sharon was offering before signing up to Mitzna's adamant rejection of collaboration.

Analysts says Labour, shocked by the collapse of the peace process and deeply divided by its former cohabitation with Sharon, could split over the issue.

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Israeli occupation soldier guards arrested Palestinia