Six Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops during an incursion into the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem Sunday, Palestinian medics said.
Among the dead was Hani Awidha, a local commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement.
Israeli special forces had surrounded a house in the town and opened fire, the medics said.
GAZA: Israeli helicopters struck a suspected militant target in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, wounding at least four people and adding to tension in the territory at the heart of a Palestinian leadership crisis.
After more than a week of unprecedented Palestinian turmoil, mediators said they had made progress in attempts to mend fences between veteran President Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, who resigned amid the chaos and calls for reforms.
A helicopter fired at least two missiles into a building in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood that residents said was the home of a militant from the Islamic Hamas group, which has sworn to destroy the Jewish state.
The army said it had targeted a weapons workshop ..."used by the Hamas terrorist organisation and likely by other terrorist organisations."
Medics said four bystanders were wounded.
Hours later Palestinian militants fired a mortar that slammed into a Jewish settlement community centre in Gaza, wounding six people, one of them seriously, medics said.
In addition to the regular Israeli raids, Gaza has been touched by unprecedented internal unrest over the past week that has stirred fears of a Palestinian civil war.
A power struggle has been triggered by an Israeli plan to uproot Jewish settlers by next year and abandon the Gaza Strip, captured like the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.
The battle pits Arafat's old guard against younger members of his Fatah movement demanding the removal of officials seen as corrupt and changes in the security forces.
Prime Minister Qurie tendered his resignation over the crisis, though he has continued to work.
Mediators said that in an apparent sign of easing tension, Qurie had officially accepted Arafat's refusal to let him quit.
But they emphasised that he had not fully withdrawn his resignation and that the issue would be discussed at a Tuesday cabinet meeting.
Arafat, who has long resisted calls for reforms that might cost him influence, said on Saturday that he would accept any government changes proposed by Qurie. He also made two new senior security appointments.
In Israel, upwards of 100,000 settler supporters gathered in a human chain from Jerusalem to the Gaza Strip in the biggest protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal plan since it won cabinet approval last month.
While polls show that most Israelis would happily relinquish Gaza, many right-wingers are against giving up land to the Palestinians and say it would be a ..."reward for Palestinian terror."
"This chain is a sign of strength," said Anita Tucker, one of the 8,000 settlers living in heavily-protected Gaza enclaves alongside more than 1.3 million Palestinians.
"Most of the people love the land of Israel and don't want to see anything destroyed," she said.
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