“They asked me what was he wearing, any body marks, stuff like that,” Papki said after filling out a form. “Since afternoon, I am searching.” Normally 50,000 people work in the twin towers, but the first attack came when many workers were not yet in their offices. Officials estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 people were in the buildings when the first plane crashed. Many fled, rushing down dozens of flights of stairs before the second jet hit and the towers collapsed.. Palestinian fighters in the besieged West Bank city of Jenin have vowed to use “dozens” of suicide bombers against the Israeli army if its encircling troops advance further. Palestinian fighters in the besieged West Bank city of Jenin have vowed to use “dozens” of suicide bombers against the Israeli army if its encircling troops advance further. Israeli tanks rolled into the outskirts of the Palestinian-ruled city of Jenin and encircled it yesterday in a siege the Israeli government said was to prevent suicide bombers reaching Israel.
The advance, well inside the 1967 Green Line into Palestinian-controlled territory, helped to snuff out any chance of Israeli-Palestinian truce talks, which have been the subject of speculation for days.In Jenin, calls for resistance rang out from loudspeakers on mosque minarets as the tanks rumbled in Now it looks a city under siege The streets were deserted The shops were closed and boarded.

Pathetic street barricades of rubble and rubbish bins have been hastily thrown up but they will be swept aside in seconds if the Israelis advance Few cars and few people were moving Most of the people were fighters, some masked. At one end of the town, gunmen flitted from one building to another, shooting sporadically at an Israeli tank that had drawn up to its edge. In the entrance to a nearby mosque, soldiers from the Palestinian National Security forces slept, after what they said was a night of fighting the advancing Israelis. Once the Israelis cross into Palestinian areas, the PNS troops openly admit fighting alongside the forces of the Tanzim paramilitaries, and co-ordinating their operations.The Israeli army did not say how long it would stay. But the government denounced the city as a “hornets’ nest” of opposition, and a breeding ground for guerrillas, producing at least six suicide bombers since the start of the intifada.

The raid was triggered by Sunday’s suicide bombing by a middle-aged Israeli Arab from the Galilee, believed to have been trained by Hamas in Jenin. He killed three Israelis.”Terror was pouring out of the city of Jenin,” said Gideon Meir, of the Israeli Foreign Ministry “Most of the suicide bombers came out of Jenin. Israeli forces last night surrounded Jenin to stop the terrorists coming out of the city.” In Jenin, among the most radical centres of anti-Israeli sentiment in the occupied territories, these declarations were greeted with pride. “Of course, it’s true”, said Mohammed, a 34-year-old Tanzim fighter, who is also a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was dismissive of the possibility of talks between Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister “It is nonsense It’s a myth.

You can’t have Jenin under siege and talk about negotiations over a truce.” The Israeli government issued a list of militant activists from Jenin it accused of attacks, naming two from Islamic Jihad, one from Hamas and one from the mainstream Fatah. One of these, a young bearded Fatah man called Abdel Karim Awes, 30, was easily found in the Jenin refugee camp, surrounded by three armed fighters. Although he denied any involvement in attacks on Israel ­ which attempted to assassinate him in May with a helicopter strike ­ he said the city was ready to defend itself, pitting suicide bombers against tanks if necessary. Other paramilitaries on the streets made the same threat.In separate fighting, Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli paramilitary border policemen on sentry duty at a base near the West Bank. Palestinians wounded an Israeli civilian and two soldiers near Jenin, Israeli officials said, and the army raided the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a barrage of mortar shells.