A Palestinian boy holds up a picture of Sami Jaradat as he stands amid the rubble of Jaradat's house

By Suliman Besharat, IOL Correspondent

JENIN, West Bank, December 2 (IslamOnline.net) - A leader of Fatah's military wing Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades was killed earlier on Tuesday, December 2, during an incursion by Israeli troops into the West Bank town of Jenin.

Amjad al-Saadi, 24, was killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops, who stormed the town during daylight hours, Al-Jazeera reported.

Rami Debis, an eyewitness, told IslamOnline.net that the occupation troops opened their fire indiscriminately on locals and moved into a nearby Palestinian refugee camp.

He said that the troops made house-to-house searches and arrested a number of Palestinian youths.

But Debis added that Palestinian fighters stood up bravely to Israeli aggression.

The town has come under Israeli incursions almost on a daily basis with Israeli tanks pushing deep into the town at night and withdrawing at dawn.

Palestinian security sources also said the Israeli army had demolished two houses in the village of Silat al-Harithiya, close to Jenin, belonging to two members of the resistance group Islamic Jihad.

One of the two, Saleh Jaradat, was killed by the occupation army in June 2003 while the second man, Iyad Jaradat, was currently in Israeli detention, one security source added.

In Tulkarm, an Israeli special force tried in vein to kidnap a member of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, according to eyewitnesses.

The latest death brings the overall toll since the start of the Intifada against Israeli occupation in September 2000 to 3,631, including 2,711 Palestinians and 854 Israelis, according to an AFP count.

On Monday, December 1, four Palestinians were killed, including a nine-year-old boy, earlier in a fresh Israeli incursion into the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's key advisor, Nabil Abu Rudeina, charged that Ramallah incursion was a deliberate ploy by Israel to "undermine national Palestinian dialogue in Cairo and disturb the launch of the Geneva Initiative".