Israeli army dynamites Palestinian home

The Israeli army dynamited Friday the house of a Palestinian woman who was killed last February in a suicide attack against a military checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian witnesses said.

Troops blew up the house of Darin Abu Aysheh in the village of Beit Wazan after evacuating seven members of her family, the witnesses said.

After her February 27 attack she left a videotape saying she carried out her operation for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

She was a 21-year-old student from Nablus' Al-Najah University.

The Israeli army has destroyed more than 120 houses in the West Bank since August, when it launched its policy of demolitions. The army says it is a deterrent to anti-Israeli attacks, while rights groups say it amounts to "collective punishment."

In another pre-dawn operation Friday, Israeli troops arrested three Palestinians suspected of involvement in anti-Israeli attacks, two near the southern city of Hebron and one in the northern Jenin area, the army said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army closed three Israeli-Palestinian security liaison offices in the northern West Bank, on the grounds they no longer serve any purpose, the two sides said.

The military on Thursday ordered Palestinian police to leave the offices in Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and Nablus and confiscated their arms, Palestinian security sources said.

An army spokesman confirmed the closures saying "the presence of armed Palestinian policemen had become a liability for Israel."