Accounts from both sides said an Israeli force which entered the town of Beit Hanoun to search for suspected militants came under fire from a police station and from other locations in the town.

As the firing continued, an Israeli helicopter flew over the town and rocketed the police station. Palestinians said three people were killed, two of them definitely policemen.

Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli soldiers kept medical teams out of the area, adding Palestinian ambulances came under fire three times after trying to evacuate the wounded and dead.

Israeli Radio reported the military action into Beit Hanoun was launched after intelligence reports were received saying some Palestinians were planning attacks.

The report, quoting Israeli Army officials, said Palestinian gunmen shot at soldiers, and Israeli troops fired back. Palestinian witnesses said the 10 Israeli tanks remained stationed in the residential area of Beit Hanoun.

In the past, Palestinian militants fired homemade mortars into Israel from Beit Hanoun.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat meanwhile met in Ramallah yesterday afternoon with United Nations special Middle East envoy Terje Larsen.

Larsen said after the meeting that he hoped the so-called “roadmap” peace plan, formulated by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, would be published soon.

The plan, the latest international attempt to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, calls on the sides to take a series of steps which would culminate in an independent Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, Washington said that the United States will “soon” release a “roadmap” toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians, President George W. Bush said yesterday.

“Soon we will release the roadmap that is designed to help turn that vision into reality,” Bush said.

But he did not specify exactly when the plan would be published.

“Both America and Great Britain are strongly committed to implementing that roadmap,” he said.

In another development, a committee representing the large Arab minority in Israel is to hold a general strike in solidarity with Iraq on Sunday to mark “Land Day”, an annual commemoration of the death of six people protesting against the confiscation of Arab lands.

The strike is also a protest about the discrimination faced by Arab Israelis and against Israel’s reoccupation of Palestinian land.

The “follow-up committee”, which is made up of Arab Israeli parliamentary deputies and local governors, has called the strike on March 30, committee spokesman Abed Anabtawi said.

He said the 27th anniversary of Land Day would focus on three issues. The first was opposition to the demolition of Arab Israeli houses, said by the authorities to be built “illegally”, as political discrimination.

Second, they would express opposition to “Israel’s aggression” in the Palestinian territories, referring to the repression of the Palestinian uprising, the reoccupation of the West Bank and the increase of military incursions into the Gaza Strip.

Thirdly, the group wants to show opposition to the “colonial campaign in Iraq” carried out by US and British troops.