Tensions rise after West Bank raid

Israeli troops have killed six Palestinians in two separate operations, including a West Bank raid the Palestinian Authority condemned as a "dangerous escalation".

It was the highest toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in a single day since a 22-day Gaza war launched one year ago on Sunday, and came amid growing tensions between Israel and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

The raid in the West Bank town of Nablus on Saturday saw dozens of Israeli jeeps roar into the historic Old City before troops barged in and shot three members of president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement in different houses, witnesses said.

The military said the three had killed an Israeli settler driving through the West Bank on Thursday when they sprayed his vehicle with bullets and that one of them, Anan Subuh, 36, was in a hiding place and armed with a handgun.

Another militant, Raid al-Surakji, 40, used his wife as a shield when troops stormed his house, the military said. Soldiers opened fire, killing him and wounding the woman with a shot to the leg.

Family members said the troops entered without warning and killed all three men in cold blood, insisting none resisted arrest or opened fire.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner confirmed none of the men fired any shots but said they refused to surrender and were considered "armed and dangerous".

"These were not people handing out roses or flowers, these are people who are shooting at Israelis driving on the road," he told reporters on a conference call. "We don't wait to be shot at if we have a threat."

Subuh was a member of Fatah's armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, but had been granted amnesty by Israel. The other two were party activists, said a Palestinian security official who asked not to be named.

Lerner said the men's membership in Fatah "raises question marks" and that Palestinian security forces were not informed of the raid until just before it happened.

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad denounced the operation as a deliberate attempt to undermine recent security gains.

"This operation represents a dangerous escalation, and can only be seen in the context of targeting the security and stability that the Palestinian Authority has been able to bring about," he said in a statement.

Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina also slammed the operation, accusing Israel of trying to "drag our people into a spiral of bloody violence".

At the funeral processions for the three men, hundreds of people marched through the streets waving Palestinian and Fatah flags, chanting: "With our souls, with our blood we sacrifice for you, martyrs."

The Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza said in a statement that Abbas's "illegitimate" government is partly to blame for the killings because of its security cooperation with Israel.

The uptick in violence in the West Bank comes after more than two years of relative calm during which Palestinian security forces loyal to Abbas have restored law and order in several former militant strongholds.

Israel has in turn lifted some of its hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks and scaled back military operations in the occupied territory.

Nablus saw heavy fighting during the 2000 intifada, or uprising, but has more recently been held up as a model of calm and proof of the Palestinian Authority's commitment to the peace process with Israel.

Meanwhile, another three Palestinians were killed in an air strike in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip near the security fence along the northern border on Saturday, local medics and the Israeli military said.

A military spokeswoman said the three were militants who had ignored warning shots, but medics and Hamas border guards stationed nearby said they were civilians scavenging for scrap metal.

Gaza, which Hamas seized from Abbas's forces in June 2007, has been relatively calm since a January 18 ceasefire ended Israel's massive 22-day offensive aimed at halting Palestinian rocket attacks.

About 1,400 Palestinian and 13 Israelis were killed and entire neighbourhoods were flattened in what was the deadliest Israeli offensive ever launched on the territory.