"This escalation is aimed at the parliamentary session today," Arafat

GAZA CITY, April 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Three Palestinian fighters were assassinated and several others wounded by Israeli occupation forces Tuesday, April 29, as a senior Israeli official said Yasser Arafat could leave his headquarters only with a "one-way ticket".

Two Israeli attack helicopters fired rockets at a car near the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, killing Nidal Salamah, 33, a leader of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a senior Palestinian security official was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying.

At least seven other people were injured in the strike, in which two rockets were fired by two Apache helicopters, the Palestinian official said. One of them, the driver of a donkey cart behind the targeted car, was very seriously hurt.

In another incident near Khan Yunis, four farmers, two of them women, were injured when Israeli forces guarding a nearby Jewish settlement bloc opened fire, Palestinian officials said.

Earlier in the day in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, two Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades members, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, were assassinated by Israeli tank fire, Palestinian security sources said.

Mahmud Salah, 28, was the group's leader for the Bethlehem region, while Anan Jawarish, 26, was one of his lieutenants, the sources said.

Israeli tanks surrounded Salah's home in the village of al-Khader before shelling and completely destroying it, killing both of them.

The deaths brought the toll from the 31-month-old Palestinian Intifada to 3,182, including 2,398 Palestinians and 726 Israelis.

The assassination of the three men, which mark a beefed-up campaign of hunting resistance group leaders by the army as a renewed U.S.-led peace effort looms, were condemned by Arafat, speaking before a key parliament session to pass a new reformist cabinet.

"This escalation is aimed at the parliamentary session which today gives its confidence vote to the new cabinet. Israel is challenging this meeting through this criminal action," he told reporters in Ramallah as the parliamentary session was about to start.

His senior aide Nabil Abu Rudeina also accused Israel of putting obstacles in the path of the new government, whose designated leader Mahmud Abbas has said he will call on armed Palestinian factions to end their attacks on Israel.

U.S. President George W. Bush has said he will publish the international "roadmap," a blueprint for peace and a Palestinian state, after the new government is sworn in.

With new peace efforts at hand, the Israeli army has stepped up attacks against Palestinian-ruled areas allegedly to track down Palestinian fighters in recent days.

On Monday, the army stormed into Nablus and captured an Al-Aqsa chief and a PFLP leader in a shoot-out in the northern West Bank city.

At the same time in Jenin they arrested local Islamic Jihad chief Rashid Abu Ali after a brief gunfight, while killing a teenage Hamas militant in the same operation.

"One-Way Ticket"

In another development, a senior Israeli official said that his country would allow Arafat to leave his headquarters in Ramallah, where he has been effectively trapped for 16 months, but only with a "one-way ticket".

"Yasser Arafat cannot hope for more than a one-way ticket, and Israel will not allow him to move around the West Bank and Gaza Strip encouraging terrorism," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

"If he wants to go abroad without coming back, he can do so, but he will have to do so alone and leave behind the 200 to 300 terrorists who are with him in the Muqataa," his war-scarred Ramallah base which has twice been besieged by Israeli tanks during the Intifada.

The official said Israel wanted to arrest and interrogate most of the people in the offices, which Arafat has not dared to leave for almost a year for fear of a raid by the Israeli army which last June reoccupied almost the entire West Bank.

The official was talking a day after moderate Palestinian prime minister-designate Abbas said he could not take up a U.S. offer to visit the White House unless Arafat was free to travel.