Israeli missile strike on Gaza adds to tension

9.00am

TULKARM, West Bank - Israeli soldiers shot dead six Palestinians in a gunbattle in the West Bank including two commanders of a militant group from President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, security sources said.

Later an Israeli F-16 warplane fired two missiles at a militant stronghold in Gaza City, levelling the building which went up in flames, the sources and witnesses said.

The violence came as Palestinians grappled with their worst internal turmoil in years.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, who has resigned amid the chaos, warned Arafat in a letter they were facing a catastrophe, with militants "running the state of affairs, and this cannot be allowed to continue."

Palestinian security sources said that Israeli undercover troops ambushed eight militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and killed six of them in a gunbattle in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm, among them two commanders.

The Israeli army said that border policeman had clashed with gunmen, killing six and capturing two.

The raid was one of Israel's deadliest in recent weeks and drew immediate calls for revenge from angry crowds that gathered at the site as Israeli helicopters patrolled overhead.

A telephone caller from the militant group threatened vengeance for what he called "this ugly crime."

In southern Gaza, militants fired an anti-tank rocket at a Jewish settlement wounding six Israelis, including children, medics and a military source said.

Israeli soldiers fired back at nearby Khan Younis, wounding seven Palestinians, five of them children, medics said.

Afterwards an Israeli fighter jet fired two missiles that destroyed a building in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood, a Hamas stronghold. The army said it had targeted a Hamas weapons workshop, which it raided twice on Sunday.

Residents said the home belonged to a Hamas militant, but it was not clear whether he was there. Medics said a four-year-old boy was hurt when he fell from the force of the blast in a nearby building, but there were no other casualties.

In a strongly-worded letter to Arafat, Qurie said "we are facing a catastrophe," and urged they co-operate to confront it, a senior official who quoted from the letter told Reuters.

Qurie sent the letter amid efforts to resolve a crisis over his resignation, which Arafat has refused to accept, and unprecedented turmoil in Palestinian areas which some fear could lead to civil war.

In Israel, Sharon faced mounting obstacles toward implementing his plan to "disengage" from Gaza.

Upwards of 100,000 settler supporters joined hands in a human chain from Jerusalem to the Gaza Strip in the biggest protest against the withdrawal plan since it won cabinet approval last month.

Sharon faced still more trouble within his rightist Likud Party, as hundreds of activists, lawmakers and cabinet ministers met to protest his efforts to bring the left-of-centre Labour party into Israel's governing coalition.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom spearheaded the revolt and said the government had committed a "primal sin" by excluding more hardliner ultra-religious parties from the coalition.

"We must not mortgage the Likud to the Labour Party," Shalom said at the meeting held outside Tel Aviv.

Sharon has wooed Labour to shore up his coalition which lost a Parliamentary majority last month when four members left in opposition to the plan to withdraw 8000 settlers from Gaza, where 1.3 million Palestinians live.

- REUTERS