Five Palestinians were killed by an explosion last night near the Farah refugee camp in the Nablus region of the West Bank, a Palestinian security source said.
The five were said to be members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed faction of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. They were wanted by Israeli authorities for involvement in several anti-Israeli attacks. The powerful blast occurred as they were sitting in a car in a garage.
The cause of the explosion was unclear, but the same Palestinian source said it could have been a rocket or tank shell fired from an Israeli position near the Elon Moreh settlement which dominates the area. Earlier yesterday, Israeli police stormed a highly contentious religious site holy to both
Jews and Muslims yesterday, after Arabs hurled rocks from the compound at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City.
The worshippers were observing a fast day marking the destruction of Jewish biblical temples in 586BC and AD70.
Ten Palestinians were lightly injured after police fired teargas and stun grenades in an effort to disperse Palestinian stone-throwers, at the very site where the Intifada uprising erupted in September last year. Fifteen policemen sustained minor injuries in the clashes, during which some 30 Palestinians were detained.
The site is Judaism's holiest and is know to Jews as the Temple Mount. For the Muslims, the compound, which contains two mosques that are built atop the ruins of the biblical temple, is known as al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary). It is Islam's third-holiest site.
Palestinian leaders had warned at the weekend that plans by a small ultranationalist Jewish group, the Temple Mount Faithful, to hold a cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Third Temple near the religious site would result in major confrontations.
The group transported the 4.5-tonne marble cornerstone to a spot outside the walls of the Old City where they held the ceremony yesterday, but police prevented them from reaching the religious compound.
The storming of the compound, however, drew strong criticism in the Arab world. The Arab League Secretary-General, Mr Amr Moussa, warned that the move could have serious consequences.
The Jordanian Information Minister, Mr Saleh Qallab, said talk of laying a cornerstone "for the alleged temple, which we do not acknowledge" under current circumstances was "a provocation of feelings and like pouring oil on flaming fires".