Sharon orders forces to target leaders of Islamic Jihad

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered Israeli security forces to target leaders of Islamic Jihad in the wake of a suicide attack by the Palestinian militant group that killed four people in the seaside resort of Netanya.

"I ordered police and Israeli security services to launch a relentless attack against the Islamic Jihad terrorist organisation and its commanders," Sharon told reporters at Ben-Gurion airport on Wednesday before welcoming hundreds of new immigrants arriving from North America.

Sharon's vow to wage the attack against the Islamic Jihad came as death toll in Tuesday's bombing rose to four. All the four casualties of the attack are women as hospital sources said that some 90 others were wounded, three critically.

Following the attack, Israel imposed closure on the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip seizing control over the city of Tul Karm and suspending talks with the Palestinian Authority.

In a pre-dawn swoop on Wednesday, Israeli troops raided Tul Karm, a Jihad stronghold and home of Tuesday's suicide bomber, killing two armed militants, Palestinian sources and the army said.

Five Islamic Jihad militants were also apprehended and some arms and explosives seized, the army said. "This operation was mounted in order to carry out pinpoint arrests of the Islamic Jihad terrorists behind the Netanya suicide bombing that killed three Israeli civilians," army sources said.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz also ordered an indefinite suspension of talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials in the wake of the attack.

The suicide bomber blew himself up a little after 6:30 P.M. on Tuesday at the intersection of Herzl and Petah Tikva streets at the entrance to the coastal town of Netanya, a target of earlier attacks during over four years of incessant violence.

Meanwhile, in a significant development in implementation of the disengagement evacuation plan from the Gaza Strip, Sharon on Wednesday ordered the Gaza Strip closed to Israeli visitors, declaring it a closed military area in order to blunt plans by anti-pullout activists to flood the Strip with protesters.

The order effectively closes the Strip to non-resident Israelis until the end of the disengagement, as opposed to a temporary closure imposed two weeks ago to allow Israeli security forces to evacuate a hotel where anti-pullout activists had barricaded themselves.