Five Palestinians die in West Bank raid

JENIN - The Israeli Army staged its deadliest West Bank raid in months yesterday, killing five Palestinian gunmen in violence that overshadowed a new round of international diplomacy.

The latest bloodshed came amid conflicting signals on whether Israeli and Palestinian leaders were preparing to meet next week in their first summit in eight months.

And in a further threat to peace, followers of Mohammed Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking in 1985, blamed the US and Israel for his death in US custody in Iraq.

In a sign that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was trying to please Washington ahead of the arrival of US envoys, a source said he had given instructions for a big cut to the route of Israel's West Bank barrier.

Troops operating undercover in the West Bank town of Jenin shot dead five members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed faction in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Israeli officials said the gunmen had been on the way to attack a nearby Jewish settlement.

A local militant leader vowed to exact "painful" revenge by staging an attack inside Israel, and the Palestinian Cabinet denounced the killings as "state terror".

Israeli political sources said earlier yesterday that talks between Sharon and Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qureia, delayed several times because of violence, had been scheduled for next Wednesday.

Underlining a possible new diplomatic push to stem the conflict, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini emerged earlier from Cairo talks to announce that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had persuaded the sides to meet next week.

Sources close to Sharon say the right-wing Prime Minister wants to hold talks to smooth the way for a White House meeting expected late this month or early next month, when he will present his unilateral plan to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza.

US envoys are due to visit Israel today to sound out Sharon on the details of his initiative. Washington has warmed to Sharon's plan, but wants assurances it will not mean abandonment of a US-backed peace "road map".

Meanwhile, the US military in Baghdad confirmed the death of Abbas, 56, captured by American forces in Iraq nearly a year ago. A US Navy autopsy found that the former guerrilla had died of a heart attack on Monday.

"We hold the Americans responsible for his death, for his assassination," said Omar Shebli, deputy to Abbas in the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF).

"His detention was illegal and his conditions in jail were bad," Shebli said.

He also accused Israel's Mossad intelligence agency of helping US forces "torture" Abbas, saying Abbas had sent word to supporters that: "Mossad officers, Jewish officers, participated in the interrogation".

- REUTERS