Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians Saturday in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the bloodiest violent outbreak in months. Three of those who were killed belonged to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, and his top aide accused Israel of inflaming tensions and seeking to torpedo US-backed efforts to renew stalled peace talks. The violence came a day before the anniversary of a three-week Gaza war that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Peace talks have been frozen since. Soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Gaza, and three West Bank militants accused of shooting to death a Jewish settler Thursday, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. A Hamas security source said the three shot in Gaza at daybreak were apparently civilians collecting scrap metal in an industrial zone near the Israeli border. In the West Bank, soldiers surrounded the homes of three members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group of Abbas's Fatah group, and killed all three. The shootings infuriated Palestinian leaders of Abbas's Western-backed government and threatened to upset a balance of power with Hamas, which seized Gaza two years ago and continue to seek to widen their influence in the West Bank. “This grave Israeli escalation shows Israel is not interested in peace and is trying to explode the situation,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, a top aide to Abbas, told Reuters. “Israel is torpedoing international and American efforts to restart peace talks,” Rdainah said. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, a close ally of Abbas, released a statement saying he “strongly condemned” the shootings, which he viewed as an “extreme escalation.” “This is a sad day for Palestinians,” Fayyad added, voicing the hope “we would not be dragged into a circle of violence, chaos and instability” and urging the international community to intervene to avoid further deterioration.
