Two Hamas militants were killed and four others wounded when a car bomb destroyed two Gaza City houses, a Palestinian hospital source told AFP.
Nineteen-year-old Hamdi Madhoun's body was severely mutilated in the blast and taken to the Shifa hospital.
According to the agency later, another body was found in the ruins of the house destroyed, quoting a Palestinian police source.
The hospital also admitted two seriously injured Hamas sympathizers, Mohammed Abu Khaled and Abdel Karim Madhoun, in addition to Khaled's wife and one of their children, who were lightly injured, sources were quoted as saying by the agency.
The car bomb explosion totally razed the home of Khaled, located about 200 meters (yards) from the Mediterranean Sea beach, witnesses said.
A neighboring house was also destroyed in the blast.
Debris from the car was strewn about the explosion site.
Earlier reports expected that a bomb exploded while being prepared by the activist. Israel Army Radio said that the activists were preparing the car bomb, confirming in its initial report that two were killed in the blast that occurred in Omar Mukhtar Street, the main vein of Gaza.
Palestine Information Center, a website backing Hamas, charged that the incident was "a sophisticated assassination attack," hinting that the bomb was activated by one of the helicopters hovering in the area since morning.
The Israel Army Radio also reported that a Jewish settler was stabbed by a Palestinian near Ganim settlement in Jenin, north of the West Bank. Her condition was unclear yet as she was rushed to the Afula Hospital.
Earlier, a Palestinian man was killed in a mysterious situation in the West Bank while another was killed in a bomb explosion near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
Haaretz newspaper reported that a Palestinian man was killed and another one injured when an explosive charge blew up near the southern Gaza Strip Jewish settlement of Rafah Yam.
The charge, which was said to have been a small one, had been placed under a private Israeli pickup truck carrying Palestinian farm laborers, Israeli public radio reported, cited by the paper.
The blast occurred from beneath the truck outside of Rafah Yam, which is located in the Gush Katif settlement block.
In addition to the truck's Israeli owner and a number of Palestinians, the owner's wife and daughter were also aboard the vehicle, according to AFP.
The wife and daughter were said to be in a state of shock, said the agency.
Meanwhile, reports differed on the killing of another Palestinian. Adnan Oudeh, 32, was said to be killed by Israeli troops as the man was on the wanted list, according to Haaretz.
The paper said Oudeh was killed after fleeing his home in Hableh, near Qalqilya, during a raid by Israeli coast guards.
But AFP said that he was a former collaborator with Israeli troops, but did not say whether Palestinians were behind the killing as customarily in such cases.
Haaretz said that another Palestinian was arrested during the raid.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli security forces arrested an officer and a policeman from the Palestinian Authority General Intelligence Service overnight, said The Jerusalem Post newspaper.
Lieutenant Abdel Bassat Albayat and Ramzi Alian were taken from the Jelazoun refugee camp north of Ramallah, said the paper, adding that the two are allegedly charged of taking part in "terror acts carried out by the PA's Force 17 against Israelis" and were on security forces' wanted lists for some time.
PALESTINIANS MARCH TO PROTEST ARAFAT ORDER FOR ARMED GROUPS TO DISBAND
Several hundred Palestinians, some of them firing assault rifles into the air, marched in protest in Rafah, Gaza on Monday against an order by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat for the disbandment of unofficial armed groups, according to AFP.
The demonstrators included members of the committees of popular resistance, which belong to Arafat' Fatah movement, whom Arafat ordered to disband over the weekend.
There were also members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Some of the 400 to 500 demonstrators were masked, while others wore hoods, with the procession headed up by men carrying an 81 millimeter mortar in a clear reference to the recent mortar attacks against Gaza Strip Jewish settlements.
Shouts abounded against security cooperation and peace negotiations with Israel.
Among the targets of the slogans were Mohammed Dahlan, chief of preventive security in the Gaza Strip, and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat.
Demonstrators chanted: "The blood of the martyrs is not for sale" and "No to traitors and treason, yes to the armed struggle!"
The angry crowd was also protesting against the arrest Saturday by Palestinian police of one of the main leaders of the radical Hamas movement, Abdel Aziz Rantissi.
"Rantissi Habibi, we are going to blow up Tel Aviv", some protestors chanted.
The march went off without becoming violent.
The decree issued Saturday by the Palestinian Authority called for the popular committees -- better known as Tanzim -- to be reintegrated into the Palestinian security forces and threatened punishment to those members of the committees who resisted.
MUBARAK SAYS ISRAELIS 'BEGGED' HIM TO MAKE CEASEFIRE ANNOUNCEMENT
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Monday that the Israelis "begged" him to make an announcement of a Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire that they later denied, said AFP.
"They begged me to make the statement I made yesterday, on a ceasefire and a resumption of negotiations on the final status in a period of four weeks," Mubarak said during a speech to parliament for the May Day holiday.
"I was then surprised to hear Israeli radio ask: 'where did President Mubarak get these remarks?'" the president said.
After talks in Cairo with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Sunday, Mubarak announced that "the Israeli and Palestinians have agreed to a ceasefire, on both sides."
But he never said when the ceasefire would be implemented.
"Four weeks after (the application) of the ceasefire, negotiations will start to find a solution to the situation," he added.
The remarks were later denied by Peres, who spoke of an agreement in principle to slow down the violence and improve conditions for Palestinians subjected to an economic blockade.
ISRAEL PLEDGES TO EASE PALESTINIAN CLAMPDOWN
Peres on Monday pledged immediate steps to ease restrictions on the Palestinians as part of efforts to end the ongoing violence, but hopes for peace remained slim.
Israel late Sunday denied an announcement in Cairo that a ceasefire had been agreed and Palestinians reported no fruit from security talks.
Peres outlined the measures after a day of marathon talks that started in Cairo with Mubarak and ended with Jordan's King Abdullah II at the Red Sea resort of Aqaba, said AFP.
However, the Jordanian foreign minister, Abdel Ilah Khatib, told AFP Peres' talks with Amman had allowed "some movement but it is not enough."
Peres also submitted his government's official response to a joint Egyptian-Jordanian bid to end the seven-month old bloodletting sparked by a Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation.
"Peres informed the king that Israel will begin from today to take measures to reduce the restriction on the Palestinian territories, including the reopening of the Gaza airport," a court spokesman told AFP.
The measures outlined by Peres also call for "an increase in the number of permits allocated to Palestinian workers in Israel and an improvement of conditions for Palestinian fishermen," the spokesman said, cited by AFP.
The king stressed that a "total lift of the (Israeli-imposed) blockade (of Palestinian territories) was an essential condition to create the favorable climate for a resumption of peace talks", the spokesman said.
But Peres said late Sunday that, contrary to what Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said earlier after the two met in Cairo, no ceasefire agreement had been concluded with the Palestinians.
Army radio quoted Peres as saying that Mubarak "had made a mistake" and that "no agreement on a ceasefire had been signed," said AFP.
Mubarak had told reporters after meeting Peres that "The Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to a ceasefire, on both sides," citing a letter he had received from Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
However, Mubarak did not say when a truce would take effect and both Peres and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa stopped short of announcing a ceasefire agreement.
Peres, the highest Israeli official to visit Jordan since the rightwing administration of Sharon took office in March, outlined to Abdullah his country's "remarks" on the Jordanian-Egyptian plan, said Haaretz newspaper.
"Some of these remarks deal with wording (contained in the plan) while others are issues of principles," an official told the paper.
"Jordan will hold consultations with Egypt before responding to the Israeli remarks," he said.
On April 16, Khatib submitted the proposals to Israel aimed at quelling the violence. They call for confidence building measures, including a halt to Israel's settlement activities and a resumption of negotiations that preserves progress made during previous failed talks.
But hard-line Sharon has rejected key elements of the plan, such as a freeze on building in the Jewish settlements of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the eventual resumption of peace negotiations from where they left off in October without a signed agreement.
And in a telephone conversation with the king before he met Peres Sharon said Israel would not negotiate before "a complete halt to terror", meaning any form of violent protest.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat spoke Sunday of "progress" linked to the Jordanian-Egyptian plan after talks in Amman with the Jordanian foreign minister. But he did not elaborate.
The European Union's senior foreign policy representative Javier Solana gave his support to the Jordanian-Egyptian peace plan during a meeting with Erakat in the West Bank town of Jericho, Erakat said.
In Washington, a State Department official said Sunday that the United States "welcomes any steps in ending the violence" in the Middle East.
ARAFAT 'SURPRISED' BY MUBARAK ANNOUNCEMENT OF CEASEFIRE ACCORD
Meanwhile, Arafat seemed surprised Sunday when he learned that Mubarak had announced a ceasefire accord between Israelis and Palestinians, said head of Israel's Meretz party leader, Yossi Sarid.
He was cited by Haaretz as telling army radio that he was talking to Arafat when the news was given to the Palestinian leader, who immediately called Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, Sarid said.
"Yes, he appeared quite surprised," he said of Arafat.
Sarid said he had handed Arafat a proposal from his party, which has 10 seats in the 120-member Israeli parliament, that the Palestinians end their violent uprising in exchange for a halt to Israeli settlement building in the Palestinian territories.
Sharon has said expansion of existing settlements will continue.
Sarid said he was "very pessimistic" about the chances of a ceasefire coming about, adding that a halt to settlements was an extremely sensitive and crucial point for the Palestinians, according to Haaretz.
MOUSSA, PERES TRADE HOT WORDS ON ISRAELI, ARAB RACISM
AFP reported that Peres and his Egyptian counterpart Moussa on Sunday traded accusations of Israeli and Arab racism that was sparked by a photograph of Peres dressed as a Nazi published by an opposition newspaper.
"I do not think that anybody can accept me in a uniform of a Nazi," Peres told reporters after talks in Cairo on ways to end Palestinian-Israeli violence and resume peace talks.
"I think that it hurts me, but it hurts more the paper," Peres said after an Israeli journalist asked him to comment on the photo which appeared Sunday in the Egyptian opposition newspaper Al-Arabi.
The paper superimposed a picture of Peres on that of a Nazi and branded the image with a swastika, said the agency.
An angry Moussa jumped into the debate and suggested there was Israeli hypocrisy as he recalled remarks from Israeli rabbis who denounced Arabs as snakes and cockroaches and who said God had regretted creating them.
"This is anti-Semitism," he said, adding Arabs were also Semites. "So if you want to open the file, we have to open the file in full."
"There is no one-way traffic on this," Moussa said.
Both Moussa and Peres agreed such hatred had to stop.
"All of us have to make a rule to stop incitement and stop the accusations that lead nowhere," Peres said. "It leads to hate and violence and crisis."
"I agree and I believe all of us agree that incitement to hatred has to stop and to come to an end. It serves no purpose," Moussa was quoted as saying.
An Egyptian court on Tuesday began hearing a defamation case against the outspoken spiritual leader of Israel's powerful ultra-Orthodox Jewish party Shas, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who had reportedly called for the annihilation of Arabs.
The rabbi later backtracked.
"I want to make clear that my remarks were aimed solely at terrorists who blindly kill the innocent," he said in a statement published in the daily Yediot Aharonot.
Yosef, who is one of the most powerful figures in Israel as a former chief rabbi and founder of Shas, the third largest party in parliament which represents the nation's Sephardic Jews, has made similarly vitriolic remarks in the past, several times calling Arabs "vipers." - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
