TEL AVIV, Israel, April 4 (UPI) -- Israeli troops Friday captured a local Islamic Jihad commander and four associates from the Tulkarim refugee camp after expelling as many as 1,500 Palestinian males from the area.
The Israeli army said the group was planning a car bomb attack and a suicide bombing inside Israel.
Military sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told United Press International the curfew and sweeping searches they have been conducting in Tulkarim since Wednesday were designed to catch the Islamic Jihad commander, Anwar Elian, and his men.
In the course of the search, the soldiers rounded up as many as 1,500 Palestinian males and sent them out of the Tulkarim refugee camp.
Soldiers surrounded Elian's hideout in the camp Thursday night. Friday morning, "We called him to come out and said that we'll go in if he doesn't, and he gave himself up," a military source in the West Bank told UPI.
"He surrendered without a fight," another military source said.
On the basis of information gleaned from interrogating the militants, the Israelis went to the village of Denabeh, near Tulkraim, where they found a laboratory with 80 pounds of explosives, 45 pounds of fertilizers used to make bombs, gunpowder, and metal balls to increase injuries, a military source claimed.
Soldiers also took as prisoners the commander of the Fatah Tanzim in Tulkarim, Abdel Hani Hamshari, and some 20 other suspects, a military source said.
Israeli troops subsequently left town and the people who had been forced out were able to return, a military spokesman said.
