RISHON LETSION, Israel, May 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian resistance fighter killed himself and two others Wednesday night, May 22, in a busy pedestrian district of Rishon Letsion, south of Tel Aviv, and left nearly 30 wounded, Israeli police and medics said.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack, after Israeli troops assassinated three of its members in the West Bank that same evening.

"We have avenged the murder of Jihad Jibril as well as the deaths of four Palestinians today [Wednesday] in Nablus and hundreds of others in the occupied territories," the group said in a statement.

Jibril was a military chief of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, killed by a car bomb in Beirut Monday, May 20.

The blast, the second here in two weeks, occurred only hours after the Israeli army said it had killed a man in the West Bank who had masterminded a number of deadly attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Israeli public television reported that the bomber detonated a powerful charge of explosives shortly after 9:00 pm (1800 GMT), in a pedestrian mall in the town, already battered by a May 7 blast inside a pool hall that left 17 dead and 55 injured.

Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said 27 people were wounded Wednesday night, including three critically. Another police official, Haim Cohen, said the bomber had "the appearance of a European, and blond hair."

The Palestinian leadership quickly issued a statement condemning what it called a "terrorist" act in Rishon Letsion.

"The Palestinian leadership has learned with rage and indignation of the new terrorist attack which targeted Israeli civilians in Rishon Letsion," said the statement.

"This operation will be used as a pretext by [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon to pursue his savage acts against our people," it added, calling on the "Palestinian people to public reject these kinds of operations."

It said this "terrorist operation constitutes a danger for our people at a time when the Israeli occupation army pursues its escalation and the occupation of our land."

But Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon ultimately blamed the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat. The Authority "does nothing to stop the attacks and contents itself with flabby condemnations that are interpreted by the Palestinians as a green light to pursue terrorism," he said.

Sharon was already slated to hold a cabinet meeting on Thursday morning, May 23, and the question of security will undoubtedly be raised.

This was the third resistance attack in Israel since Sunday, when a Palestinian blew himself up in the coastal city of Netanya, killing two Israelis.

The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine both claimed that attack.

Wednesday's blast struck on the same day the army killed three Palestinian activists in the West Bank, the army said.

Mahmoud Titi, Imad Khatib and Iyad Abu Hmeydan were killed in the Balata refugee camp, apparently after being targeted by an Israeli tank firing from a position near the town of Nablus, the army and Palestinian security sources said.

They were all members of the Brigades, the sources said.

A Palestinian civilian was also killed.

An army statement said "an important terrorist chief, Mahmoud Titi, a member of Tanzim and wanted by Israel, was killed" during an operation launched by its forces.

"Titi was implicated in a number of attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers and was killed in the cemetery of the Balata refugee camp, where he organized his terrorist activities."

Israel has carried out more than 60 targeted assassinations of Palestinian resistance activists during the course of the intifada.

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in the West Bank, one of them armed and wearing an explosive belt, and detained a number of men in a raid on a village there.

Israeli border police shot dead a man they claimed was wearing an explosive belt and carrying a sniper rifle and a pistol near the village of Silat Al-Harthiya, northwest of Jenin.

The resistance group Islamic Jihad later identified him as Khalid Zakarna, a local leader of their armed wing, saying he was killed fighting the Israeli forces.

The army also said it raided the Palestinian self-rule village of Salfit, between Nablus and Ramallah, and abducted 15 people, including a local leader of Hamas, who was not identified.

Israel troops also abducted two Palestinian police officers and a civilian in a village near the West Bank city of Hebron and detained a young woman in the self-rule town of Tulkarem.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, two Palestinian teenagers were wounded by Israeli gunfire, one seriously, during an Israeli incursion into Rafah, near the Egyptian