NABLUS, West Bank, April 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Israel carried out a bloody massacre in Jenin’s refugee camp on Sunday, April 7, killing at least 35 Palestinians after Palestinians refused to comply to their orders.

Israeli occupation forces bombed the refugee camp using U.S.-made Apache planes with more than 20 rockets, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite channel reported.

Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said Sunday that at least 35 Palestinians were killed so far in five days of combat, although there was no independent confirmation as the town has been declared a closed military zone by the occupation army, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Israel’s occupation army has said seven have been killed in fighting in the makeshift neighborhood in Jenin, built to accommodate refugees who fled Israeli atrocities in their homes in Palestine when the Israeli state was created in 1948.

Fighting between Palestinian resistance activists and Israel’s occupation soldiers erupted after the camp’s residents refused to comply to Israelis who ordered them to get into the mosque’s court in the camp.

Hamas representative in Jenin, Gamal Hega said that hundreds of Palestinians were killed in this Israeli massacre.

He added that Jenin residents are still resisting Israeli soldiers.

Hega said that the refugee camp is also being demolished by the occupation forces which as he said received demolition orders from the hawkish Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.

Israeli occupation army spokesman General Ron Kitrey said the occupation army had received no orders to speed up the operation, despite Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's words to U.S. President George W. Bush late Saturday, April 6, that he would move more quickly to finish the West Bank operation.

One resident of the refugee camp contacted by telephone told AFP that Israeli Apache helicopters had fired around 120 rockets on the town in almost five days of fighting and that the strikes were continuing.

Ahmed Bajat also said that Israeli forces had ploughed a road 12 meters (yards) wide through the western side of the camp, leveling homes and other buildings in their path.

Another man, Abu Atta, said by telephone that the Israeli occupation army had locked 27 people in one room for nearly 24 hours before letting them go Sunday.

The U.N. agency dealing with Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the situation as "a hellish battleground among the civilians" in the Jenin camp and in the Balata camp in Nablus.

The Israeli daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, reported from inside the town that as the battle raged on, Israeli bulldozers were demolishing houses, sometimes burying inhabitants alive who refused calls to surrender.

Meanwhile in Nablus, around 15 kilometers to the south, fighting was still underway in the crowded Old City, where residents said occupation troops were smashing through walls from house to house to avoid bullets flying wildly in the streets.

Seven Palestinians, including at least three fighters, were killed here as high-pitched street battles raged, Palestinian medical officials said.