Four dead in West Bank, one in Gaza (Roundup)

Jan 4, 2007, 17:11 GMT

Gaza - Four Palestinians were killed and 20 injured in Ramallah Thursday evening during an Israeli incursion into the West Bank city, hospital sources said.

The Israeli military confirmed it had conducted 'standard arrest operations' in the city and said it arrested four suspected Palestinian militants. The main target, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades loyal to the Fatah movement, escaped.

At the scene of the arrests, gunfire was exchanged between militants and Israeli soldiers and outside Palestinians protested, throwing rocks and blocks at the soldiers. A Palestinian photojournalist was critically wounded.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, one Palestinian was killed and at least four were injured as the rival Hamas and Fatah movements continued their bloody clashes.

The dead was a member of the ruling Hamas, killed in a shoot-out in the northern Gaza refugee camp of Jabaliya, security sources said. At least two people were injured.

At least two others were also injured later in intense exchanges of fire between supporters of the two groups during a funeral in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya.

In the West Bank as well incidents took place between the factions overnight.

In Jenin, the car of Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, Wasfi Kabha, was set on fire and his house was fired on, while in a nearby town an imam, affiliated with Hamas, was fired on while leaving mosque.

The deputy minister of health, from the ruling Islamic Hamas part, was abducted during the night but released in the morning.

On Wednesday, five people were killed, most of them Fatah members, in resurfacing clashes in the north and south of the Strip despite a fragile, two-week-old internal Palestinian truce.

Also, in Gaza City nearly 100 Palestinian journalists gathered in front of the Palestinian parliament Thursday, demanding the release of Jaime Razuri, the Peruvian photographer working for the French news agency AFP, who was abducted Monday and is still being held by militants in Gaza.

The head of the political wing of the Hamas movement, Khaled Mashaal, has called for Razuri's release, according to Haaretz Daily.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, meanwhile returned to Gaza Thursday morning without violent incidents but amid tight security checks through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, after making a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was due to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el- Sheikh Thursday evening.

The two were to discuss Olmert's meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of nearly two weeks ago, as well as joint Israeli- Egyptian efforts to curb ongoing weapons smuggling across the Egypt- Gaza border.

An Israeli government official said on condition of anonymity that the two leaders were not expected to announce a deal between Israel and Hamas on a prisoners swap.

The official called Hamas' conditions for the release of some 1,400 militants jailed in Israel in exchange for one Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza 'exaggerated' and said Israel had rejected these demands 'out of hand.'

Israel and the radical Islamic movement are indirectly negotiating Corporal Gilad Shalit's release under Egyptian mediation.

A senior Hamas official said Thursday his movement, whose armed wing captured Shalit in a June 25 cross-border raid from Gaza, was ready to provide Israel with a videotape of the soldier if Israel freed several women and a 'considerable' number of detainees in a first stage.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, in a telephone call with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, confirmed that the soldier was still alive.

Israeli demands for the soldier's release had been turned down for 'security circumstances,' he said.

'(But) if Israel agrees to set free Palestinian women and a considerable number of detainees in exchange for this videotape, it would be provided with the videotape,' Marzouk said.

He said what the Palestinians were demanding in exchange for releasing the Israeli soldier is 'modest in light of the dear price which the Palestinian people have paid and the collective punishment it has faced by Israel following the capture of the soldier.'