ENIN, West Bank, June 23 — Ahmed Abu Aziz was 6 and owned a purple bicycle. On Friday, this locked-down city began to stir to rumors that the curfew was being lifted for a few hours. Ahmed asked his father for a shekel, worth just under 25 cents, for a trip to the store by bike with two brothers.
Today, his bicycle sat in the yard of his parents' house, the seat and right handlebar blown off. A little memorial of stones and seashells to Ahmed includes the Coco Dance candy bar he had bought with the shekel just before stray Israeli tank fire killed him, along with his brother, Jamil, 13.
The curfew, it turned out, was still in force. Israeli tanks shelled the central market, where residents had rushed in to shop, leaving 4 people dead, including 3 children, and wounding 26. Later, the military said the shelling was a mistake, committed during a week of especially violent attacks against Israelis.
"Do they think that will bring back my kids?" the boys' father, Yousef, 49, a driver for the United Nations, asked today. "What is my guilt if someone blows himself up? It's their responsibility to look for these people. It's not their responsibility to kill my kids."
Israel's leaders, determined to stop future suicide attacks, announced last week a more aggressive policy of moving back into Palestinian territory and arresting militants. In Jenin, a city of many Palestinian militants, residents say the policy has been in full force.
On Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed 19 people on a Jerusalem bus. Then, from Wednesday until Saturday, Jenin was under curfew.
The tank shooting, which also killed a 6-year-old girl and a 60-year-old man, occurred at the central market as troops were searching house to house for a bomb laboratory. One shell apparently strayed perhaps half a mile to kill Ahmed and Jamil Abu Aziz as they rode home. A third brother is in a hospital.
A 12-year-old boy was killed overnight on Friday in Jenin when a ceiling collapsed as soldiers destroyed what they said was a bomb laboratory next door.
Residents said they had seen soldiers trucking in mobile homes to Jenin's outskirts — barracks for a longer military presence — though none were in sight today.
Also since Wednesday, residents said, hundreds of men have been rounded up and detained — including Akram Abu Sbaa, who said he was taken to a nearby military camp on Wednesday and held for 48 hours along with others in tents before being released.
"This is collective punishment," said Mr. Abu Sbaa, 39. "It is because we are Palestinians. They want to humiliate us."
Today, Jenin itself was largely quiet, though Palestinian official said Israeli forces had entered the nearby village of Yamun, killing a Palestinian policeman and wounding another. Residents took advantage of several hours without the curfew, shopping for what many said they believed would be a long period of not being allowed to leave their homes.