BETHLEHEM, West Bank - Avenging a bloody Jerusalem bus bombing, Israeli troops with tanks invaded this biblical town yesterday, demolishing the suicide bomber's rental home and arresting his father and at least 19 other Palestinians in house-to-house searches.
No casualties were reported here, but Palestinians said a United Nations official from Britain was killed in crossfire between Israelis and Arabs in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
Ian Hook, 50, was shot in his compound of several trailers, which served as headquarters for a U.N. operation to rebuild housing in the battle-scarred camp. Israel's army spokesman said the incident was under investigation to determine whether Arabs or Israelis fired the fatal bullet.
The army also reported that a soldier was killed in the Gaza Strip in a battle with Palestinians early yesterday.
In Bethlehem, Israel's offensive went off without major clashes. A column of tanks, armed personnel carriers and reinforced jeeps roared up to the home of Nael Abu Hilail, 23, who blew himself up on a bus in a Jerusalem neighborhood Thursday, killing 11 passengers.
The soldiers ordered the dozen or so family members to get out of the home and then set charges to collapse the five-room apartment, which Hilail's father had rented for the past two months.
Troops took away his father, Asmi, presumably for questioning, a day after he hailed his son's feat as an act of martyrdom consistent with Islam. Mainstream Islamic scholars say killing innocent people and suicide are strictly forbidden.
To aid the operation, Israeli forces placed a curfew on all of Bethlehem for the first time since they withdrew from most portions in August.
The invasion amid two years of Palestinian uprising solidified Israel's position as the sole effective police force in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel says Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has abetted the violence; Palestinians counter that Israel has systematically dismantled the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, which permits the Arabs to police themselves.
The Rev. Amjad Sabara, a priest, stood in the shadows of the Church of the Nativity yesterday and said the Israelis showed up during the night and met no resistance. Since then, no pilgrims had managed the five-mile journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem because of military roadblocks. "Today? Only journalists," the Franciscan priest said. "There is a curfew. Everything is closed."