Unrest causes university closings

JERUSALEM -- Israel shut down two Palestinian universities in the divided town of Hebron on Wednesday, while Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians in West Bank clashes, officials said.\nIsraeli forces closed the Islamic University and the Polytechnic Institute in Hebron as part of its response to a Palestinian suicide bombing in Tel Aviv earlier this month. That attack killed 23 people.\nSome students at the universities belong to militant groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and use its facilities to plan and carry out attacks, the army said in a statement.\nIn east Jerusalem, Israeli authorities sealed the apartments of three imprisoned Hamas militants by filling them with concrete so as to leave the multi-story buildings intact. A home belonging to a fourth Hamas member was destroyed.\nThe four militants were recently convicted of organizing bombings that killed 35 people, including five Americans who died in a July attack at Hebrew University.\nUnlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Arabs living in east Jerusalem have Israeli identity cards that allow them to travel freely inside Israel. The four were able to move about to plan the bombings, Israeli authorities said.\nA statement released in Hamas' name on Tuesday in Beirut, Lebanon, said the group had new rocket-propelled grenades capable of piercing tank armor. The statement also said Hamas had produced a new batch of its Izzadine al-Qassam rockets.\nPalestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Palestinian factions were trying to reach agreement on a possible ceasefire, but had failed so far. Hamas and other militant groups have rejected appeals by Arafat to halt attacks against Israel.\nArafat also criticized recent Israeli military actions.\nIn the town of Tulkarem, Israeli troops entered a refugee camp to arrest suspected militants, the army said. Gun battles and stone-throwing clashes erupted at the entrance to the camp, Palestinian witnesses said.\nA Palestinian detonated several bombs, and soldiers fired and killed him, the army said. Palestinian hospital officials said Mouhi Aldin Hamza, 16, was killed in the clash, though it was not clear whether he was the same person the army was referring to.\nA second 16-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops in stone-throwing clashes that erupted later in Tulkarem, Palestinian witnesses and officials said. Soldiers shot and hit at a Palestinian who was hurling firebombs at troops, the army said, adding it had no information on his condition.\nIn Kabatiya village in the northern West Bank, Israeli troops surrounded a building where two suspected militants were hiding, and demanded that the pair surrender, Palestinian witnesses said.\nA gunbattle erupted between the soldiers and the gunmen, and at one point a third Palestinian man began walking toward the troops, the army said. The man ignored warnings to stop, and troops shot him dead, fearing he was a suicide bomber.\nMore than 20 suspected Palestinian militants were arrested in West Bank sweeps overnight, the army said Wednesday morning.