Israeli troops kill 6 in Gaza, West Bank raids

GAZA, May 30 (Reuters) Israeli soldiers today shot dead three members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the army's first ground raid into the Gaza Strip since an Israeli pullout last year.

A Palestinian policeman, who witnesses said rushed to the scene with medics, was also killed by the troops in the brief operation marking a new Israeli military response to frequent cross-border rocket barrages that have caused few casualties.

In the occupied West Bank, soldiers killed at least two Palestinian gunmen in separate operations.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has called for the rocket strikes to stop, condemned the Israeli raids as ''unjustified escalation that will lead the region into further deterioration and instability''.

Witnesses to the Israeli raid in the northern Gaza Strip said commandos backed by a helicopter gunship killed members of a rocket launching crew as they were about to fire at Israel.

At least three of the dead were identified as gunmen from the militant Islamic Jihad group and the fourth man belonged to the Force 17 presidential guard.

''The fighters were firing rockets into Israel in retaliation for the continued Israeli crimes and the assassination of Abu Hamza al-Majzoub in Lebanon,'' an Islamic Jihad statement said, referring to a car bombing that killed a senior official of the group in south Lebanon on Friday.

An Israeli government source said at the time that Israel had nothing to do with the killing.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the overnight fighting marked the first ground combat in Gaza since Israel withdrew its troops and dismantled 21 Jewish settlements there in August and September.

Israeli troops have on occasion ventured across the border fence to dismantle bombs, the army spokeswoman said.

WEST BANK An Islamic Jihad member was killed and three other militants wounded in the northern West Bank village of Qabatia. In a Palestinian refugee camp near the city of Nablus, a wanted militant was shot dead and another wounded.

Witnesses said a third militant was killed by troops in the town of Anabta. But the army denied operating in the area.

The persistent violence has complicated efforts by Abbas, a moderate who advocates negotiating with Israel, to cajole the new Islamist Hamas government to accept peacemaking with the Jewish state.

Abbas has threatened to put long-running proposals for a two-state accord to a Palestinian referendum by July if Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, keeps its hard line.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, on Monday rejected the idea as a waste of time and money. ''Nobody will recognise Israel. There is no need for a referendum,'' he said.

REUTERS SY ND1652