A Palestinian politician accused of ordering the assassination of an Israeli minister was in Israeli hands this evening after soldiers stormed a West Bank prison, igniting a wave of revenge protests across the occupied territories.

Israeli bulldozers, backed by helicopters and tanks, surrounded the crumbling jail in Jericho from early this morning.

At shortly before 7pm local time (1700GMT) the last of the 200 prisoners - including Ahmed Saadat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) - gave themselves up.

General Yair Naveh, the head of Israeli central command, said this evening: "The operation was completed with success."

As demonstrations swept across the West Bank and Gaza, Britain and the United States became the focus of Palestinian aggression. UK and US monitors left the prison just 20 minutes before Israel's tanks rolled in, prompting accusations that the West had betrayed an international agreement and colluded with Israel.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, denied the accusation, saying that the Palestinian Authority had been unable to guarantee the safety of its observers.

As the stand-off intensified, the International Red Cross announced that it was temporarily pulling out of the region following the kidnap of a Swiss worker. Two Australian teachers, two French female aid workers, an American professor and a South Korean were also taken hostage.

The British Cultural Centre, a European Union compound and an American company providing English classes were torched. The British Council building in the West Bank city of Ramallah also came under fire and the retaliatory violence showed no sign of diminishing this evenng.

Mr Saadat is wanted by Israel in connection with the killing of Rehavam Zeevi, the Israeli Tourism Minister, in 2001. He emerged from his cell with his hands up, 12 hours after pledging in a phone call to the Al Jazeera satellite network to fight to the death.

“If comrade Ahmed Saadat is harmed, we vow that the price will be very high for Israel,” an official of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades told Al Arabiya television by
telephone this evening.

An armed Israeli convoy was seen driving away from the prison later, on its way back to Israel. Mr Saadat now faces a trial in an Israeli court which will Ehud Olmert's reputation for toughness. Mr Olmert, the acting head of the Kadima party, faces a general election in two weeks.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, fanned the anti-Western sentiment saying that he held Britain and the US responsible for the siege. The speaker of the Hamas-dominated parliament also launched a vitriolic attack on Western "betrayal", accusing it of giving Israel the green light to storm the prison.

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