Palestinian death toll rises sharply in 2006

JERUSALEM, Dec 30 (Reuters) Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians in 2006, well over three times as many as the year before, an Israeli human rights group said.

B'Tselem, an independent body that monitors Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, said yesterday that at least 322 of the dead Palestinians were not taking part in hostilities at the time they were killed.

It said that Palestinians had killed 17 Israeli civilians in the West Bank and Israel during 2006 as well as six members of the security forces. It was the lowest annual toll of Israelis killed by Palestinians since an uprising broke out in the West Bank and Gaza in 2000.

The Israeli army made no immediate comment.

Most of the Palestinians were killed during an offensive into Gaza, which was launched after militants captured a soldier in a cross-border raid and fired barrages of rockets from the territory that Israel had abandoned in 2005.

B'Tselem put the death toll in Gaza at 405 Palestinians and said that 205 people were not taking part in hostilities at the time they were killed.

Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip under a truce just over one month ago.

In addition to the fighting with Israel, Palestinian territories have been beset by unprecedented internal violence, much of it linked to a power struggle between Hamas Islamists and President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah.

Abbas has put the death toll at well over 300.

Reuters AB GC0931