Israeli troops have shot dead a top Hamas official in the West Bank city of Hebron, striking another blow to peace initiatives battered by two weeks of spiralling violence.
Witnesses said they saw soldiers shoot at a car, killing Hamas leader Abdullah Kawasme in what Palestinians described as an "assassination". Security sources said troops attempted to arrest Kawasme.
A political source said Kawasme was one of Israel's most wanted militants responsible for a series of attacks on Israelis, including last week's bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 17 people.
The Palestinian Authority has long demanded Israel end its track-and-kill operations, which it says block attempts to achieve a truce and begin implementing a U.S.-backed peace plan.
"This is another proof that the Israelis are...continuing the assassinations," Palestinian Cabinet Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters on Saturday.
"These operations are meant to obstruct any success of the dialogue to reach a truce (with militants)," Rabbo added.
Israel has gained international condemnation for its targeted operations aimed at Palestinian militants. It vowed all-out war on the militant group Hamas after last week's bus bombing, killing six Gaza militants using helicopter missiles.
The strikes also killed at least 17 bystanders, one of whom died of his wounds on Saturday, doctors said.
Hamas, which is committed to Israel's destruction, has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks following a June 4 summit in which Israeli and Palestinian leaders accepted a U.S.-backed road map peace plan and vowed to cease the violence.
During a trouble-shooting visit by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday, Hamas claimed a shooting attack that killed a Jewish settler with both American and Israeli citizenship. His funeral was held Saturday night.
A source in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said Israel agreed to give Palestinians three weeks to organise forces for a crackdown on militants.
During this period, Israeli forces in the territories would largely stand down, the source said, but added "there would be no immunity for 'ticking bombs'" -- militants Israel says are about to attack.
Palestinians did not comment on the plan. Israel, emboldened by Powell's denunciation of Hamas as an "enemy of peace", has rejected Abbas's conciliatory focus on a ceasefire.
"A truce is in itself a ticking bomb, so it cannot last in the long run," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio. "There cannot be a situation where the Palestinian extremists decide when this ticking bomb becomes a live and real bomb."
U.S. officials said Gaza, Hamas' densely populated stronghold which has been subject to repeated Israeli incursions and air strikes, was under discussion for possible transfer to Palestinian security control to advance the peace plan.
Powell made clear the road map -- drafted by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- also depended on restraint by Israel, whose right-wing government accepted the plan under heavy U.S. pressure.
U.S. sources in Washington said Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, co-managing peace efforts with Powell, would visit the region next week.