BETHLEHEM, West Bank, April 3 (AFP) — Israeli forces took over the biblical city of Bethlehem yesterday in their drive against Palestinian towns on the West Bank, killing five people in the latest fighting and bombarding the headquarters of the regional security chief.

Elsewhere on the West Bank, Ramallah central hospital said it had started burying corpses in its parking lot after the town’s morgue overflowed under the death toll of Israel’s five-day-old invasion and ambulances were unable to reach the cemetery.

Israeli forces fired on several churches in Bethlehem yesterday, church officials said, adding that a priest previously reportedly slain was alive.

Father Raed Awad, secretary to the patriarch of the Roman Catholic Church in Jerusalem, also said some nuns might have been injured as Israeli tanks took over the city. But he could not confirm previous reports that seven had been shot.

“A Lutheran church was hit and a shell entered the office of the pastor,” he told AFP.

Hospital sources said earlier that Israeli forces had fired on two churches in Bethlehem yesterday, killing a priest and wounding at least seven nuns.

Also caught up in the turmoil of the operation launched two days after Easter was Bethlehem’s main Omar mosque which caught fire late yesterday for undetermined reasons, an AFP journalist said.

Around 150 people, 20 of them wounded, were stranded inside the Church of the Nativity in central Bethlehem after taking shelter from Israeli gunfire, Palestinian witnesses said.

Israeli forces yesterday killed three Palestinian militants and a teenage bystander in a shootout in Bethlehem, Palestinian security sources said.

The Israelis also shot dead another Palestinian man as he was driving his car in the town of Hebron to the south, the sources said.

They said three members of the Al Aqsa Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, were gunned down in a firefight in Bethlehem’s market.

A 15-year-old boy caught in the crossfire was also killed, the sources said.

A Palestinian militant was killed by soldiers near the Erez crossing point between the northern Gaza Strip and Israel late yesterday.

Bethlehem was the fifth town taken as Israeli troops swept the West Bank hunting for Palestinian militants after laying siege to Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah on Friday.

Mussa Abu Hmed, head of West Bank hospital services, said Ramallah hospital morgue’s capacity of 18 bodies had been overflowing since Sunday.

Adding to the soaring death toll, a Palestinian woman was shot dead by Israeli forces as she left the hospital after receiving treatment, medical sources said.

But despite growing international criticism of Israel’s onslaught, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intensified the pressure on Arafat, saying that if he was allowed to leave it would be alone and on a “one way ticket”.

The Palestinian leadership rejected the offer of escape from Ramallah, accusing Sharon of aiming to kill Arafat.

Israeli tanks and helicopters, backed by snipers, also pounded the CIA-equipped headquarters of Arafat’s security chief, Colonel Jibril Rajoub, saying it was hiding around 250 people, including some of the militants on Israel’s most wanted list.

Five buses several hours later left the besieged compound in the village of Beitunya near Ramallah with about 180 people on board and headed toward an Israeli army base, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said.

The Israelis launched a withering barrage of tank, helicopter and machinegun fire at the headquarters, engulfing the main building in flames, according to witnesses.

The bombardment followed heavy fighting between the Palestinian security forces inside the compound and the Israeli troops, who gave the Palestinians an ultimatum to leave.

At one point, 14 tank shells rained down in a few minutes while two helicopters above fired at least three rockets.

There was no word on the whereabouts of Rajoub, head of the West Bank preventive security services.

Israel seized Ramallah early Friday when Sharon sent in troops to pin down and “isolate” Arafat, whom he blames for 18 months of violence that have left more than 1,670 people dead.

The Israeli army says it has rounded up 500 Palestinians in recent days in a house-to-house sweep in the city.

The Jewish state’s forces have also rolled into the towns of Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Beit Jala in their biggest military offensive on the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East war.

Palestinian security sources said three Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel were executed early yesterday at a Palestinian police post in Bethlehem. Seven suspected collaborators were executed the day before in Tulkarem.

In the Gaza Strip, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed yesterday by Israeli army gunfire at Al-Tufah checkpoint near Khan Yunis, Palestinian security and medical sources said.