Israeli forces 'seize Palestinians' over settler killing

Israeli officers stormed Hamas offices in Nablus overnight. Picture / Reuters

RAMALLAH - Israeli forces have entered a police station in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seizing two Palestinians suspected of involvement in killing a Jewish settler last week, residents said.

The two men had been detained by Palestinian police on suspicion of killing 18-year-old Eliyahu Asheri. His body was found on June 29.

The army had earlier said it was surrounding the building to get hold of the men.

The Popular Resistance Committees, which claimed responsibility for killing Asheri after first saying it was holding him hostage, said that the men detained in Ramallah had nothing to do with the death.

Israeli-Palestinian relations have sunk to new depths over the abduction of a soldier by militants from Gaza. The captors have set a 6am (3pm Tuesday NZT) deadline for Israel to free hundreds of prisoners in exchange.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected the ultimatum and his defence chief said Israel would "know how to reach everyone responsible" if Corporal Gilad Shalit was harmed.

In its "Military Communique 3", the armed wing of the governing Hamas movement and two other factions said: "If the enemy does not agree to our humanitarian demands ... we will regard this case as closed."

"We give the Zionist enemy until 6am (3pm NZT) tomorrow, Tuesday, the fourth of July."

In previous communiques, the groups called on Israel, as a first stage, to release 400 Palestinian women and youths in its prisons in return for information about Shalit, abducted in a June 25 raid launched from Gaza.

The groups - Hamas' Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees and the previously unknown Islamic Army - subsequently demanded Israel free 1000 prisoners.

Unless the demands were met, the factions said, "the enemy will bear full responsibility for future consequences".

"If the enemy truly values the life of the captured soldier, it just has to implement the demands of the factions," Izz el-Deen spokesman Abu Ubaida said.

The groups accused Israel, mounting an offensive in Gaza, of bad faith in an Egyptian mediation effort to end the crisis.

But Olmert's office said in a statement: "The government of Israel will not yield to the extortion of the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government, which are led by murderous terrorist organisations."

"We will not conduct any negotiations on a prisoner release," it said. "The Palestinian Authority bears full responsibility for the well-being of Gilad Shalit and his return, safe and sound, to Israel."

Hamas sources said Western diplomats, whom they did not name, had told the group that Israel had prepared a 13-man hit list headed by exiled leader Khaled Meshaal and including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar.

Western countries, which have cut off aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, have urged the release of the soldier and called on Israel to show restraint. The European Union said on Monday it was "extremely concerned" at the tensions and called on all parties to avoid violating international law.

Israel, which pulled out of Gaza last year, sent troops and tanks into the southern Gaza Strip last Wednesday after gunmen seized Shalit, a 19-year-old tank gunner in a raid in which two other soldiers and two of the attackers were killed.

Hours before the militants' communique, Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers pushed into the northern Gaza Strip in what an Israeli military source described as a "pinpoint operation" to locate tunnels and explosives near the border fence.

A Palestinian gunman in the area was killed by an Israeli aircraft, witnesses said.

- REUTERS