Israeli occupation army killed six Palestinians on Saturday in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the bloodiest violent outbreak in months, Reuters reported. Three of those killed belonged to Fatah. An official in Abbas"s government accused Israel of a "grave escalation. Israeli armoured vehicles entered the West Bank city of Nablus before dawn, when soldiers surrounded homes where members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were inside. The troops shot dead three and a woman had been wounded in the leg. In Gaza, Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians near a border fence as they collected scrap metal. The violent upsurge threatened to derail Western-backed security cooperation forged between Abbas"s police force and Israel. It also pointed up the risks of stalled U.S.-backed peace talks, frozen since a three-week Gaza war whose first year anniversary falls on Monday, December 27 and in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
