JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Three Israeli soldiers were killed and another was injured in Gaza Thursday night when Palestinian bombers were able for the first time to pierce the armor of an Israeli tank.
Israel military officials said Friday "a sophisticated anti-armor device" went off as the Israeli tank rolled over it. The turret blew off and the Merkava 3 tank overturned in the blast, pinning one of the soldiers underneath as the tank caught fire, Israel Radio reported.
The Salah al Din Brigade claimed responsibility for the strike, calling it a joint operation between Hamas and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Salah al Din Brigade is part of the national resistance committees made up of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah members. According to the U.S. State Department, the organization has committed at least one terror attack in the past. Hamas is an Islamic group which has a military wing that has conducted suicide attacks on Israelis.
Hours later on Friday, a Palestinian was killed as Israeli troops entered the West Bank village of Saida, north of Tulkarem, in an attempt to arrest suspected Palestinian terrorists, the Israel Defense Forces said.
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The IDF said Palestinians fired at the forces, and the Israeli soldiers returned fire, killing the Palestinian, who was armed. The IDF arrested five Palestinians during the operation, conducted in the Palestinian-controlled area of Saida.
The IDF said Lt. Col. Eyl Weiss, 34, was killed during the Saida operation when a wall fell on him while a house was being demolished. He had been commander of an elite Israeli intelligence unit since April.
Israeli commanders said they were concerned about Thursday night's tank attack because it resembled tactics used against Israeli forces by Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.
The IDF said the tank was sent down the Karni-Netzarim road after an earlier attack on a civilian bus.
The Salah al Din Brigade claimed the attack was in revenge for the five Palestinian police officers killed during this week's Israel army incursion into Palestinian towns in northern and central Gaza.
Israel said its forces swept into those towns in response to the firing of two Palestinian-built Qassam-2 rockets into Israel from Gaza on Sunday. Those missiles have a range of up to eight miles and could threaten Israeli population centers; their use is seen by Israel as a major escalation in the nearly 18-month old conflict.(More on the Qassam-2)
In a separate Israeli operation on Friday, the IDF also entered the village of Jaba'a, in the northern West Bank, and arrested two Islamic Jihad activists there, the IDF said.
Also, according to Palestinian security sources, two Israeli tanks entered a Palestinian-controlled area along the road between the Gaza villages of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya. The same area was the scene of a large Israeli military operation earlier in the week.
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