Ahmed Saadat, jailed leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), vowed on Tuesday not to surrender to Israeli troops who stormed into a prison in the West Bank town of Jericho in an effort to arrest him.

Saadat made the remarks from the Jericho prison in a telephone interview with the Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV channel. "We will not surrender and we will fight with courage," Saadat said. "We will face our fate together with the Palestinian people bravely."

"We assure that we will get our strength and power from our people. Our people are being targeted (by the Israelis) and we will fight with every possible means we have," he said. Saadat has been imprisoned since August 2002 as Israel accused him of ordering the assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli troops surrounded and stormed intothe prison, demanding the surrender of Saadat and five othermilitants.

Palestinian prime minster-designate Ismail Haneya, from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), warned Israel not to hurt Saadat.

Haneya said Israel would take full responsibility for anything that might happen to Saadat and five other militants." Israel will be completely responsible if Saadat is hurt, and we call on Israel to stop as immediate as possible its operation," he said, adding he would exert all efforts to release Saadat. He also called on the international community to interfere and stop the Israeli army raid on the prison.

Meanwhile, Palestinian gunmen attacked British and U.S. office buildings in the Gaza Strip in protest against the Israeli prison raid, witnesses said.

Protestors set fire to the British cultural center in Gaza City and some angry demonstrators briefly stormed the offices of Amideast, a private U.S. organization that offered English classes and education.

Majd al-Rimawi, one of the prisoners inside the Jericho prison told the local Palestinian television that Israeli soldiers had stormed into the prison and demanded all prisoners to come out of the rooms and hand themselves over to the Israeli army." The American and British guards who are guarding the prisonhad left shortly before the Israeli army raided Jericho, which means that the raid on the prison was coordinated in advance with the foreign guards," said Rimawi.

The Palestinian authorities have condemned the Israeli raid and the withdrawal of U.S. and British monitors from the Jericho prison.