An armed faction within Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation has said it views a ceasefire called by him as cancelled after the killing of a militant that Palestinians blamed on Israel.
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The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades vowed in a statement to retaliate for the death in an explosion of Raed al-Karmi, one of the group's local leaders in the West Bank city of Tulkarm.
The group, an informal armed faction in Fatah, had agreed to abide by Mr Arafat's December 16th ceasefire order, issued following a wave of deadly attacks by Islamic militants on Israelis.
But it said following Mr Karmi's death: "The hoax of the so-called ceasefire is cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. With your assassination of Raed al-Karmi, you have opened hell on yourselves. You will be burned by its fire".
Fatah sources said Mr Karmi was killed when a bomb planted on a cemetery wall near his house exploded as he walked past. The Israeli army declined to comment and Israeli government officials said they did not know the cause of Karmi's death.
In the statement, the brigades said: "We will not stand with our hands behind our backs while Israel continued to occupy Palestinian land and humiliate and kill people and their fighters".
Mr Marwan Barghouthi, a Fatah leader in the West Bank, accused Israel of killing Karmi and called his death a new crime by the Israeli terrorist government. "This will lead the situation towards more deterioration and more explosions in the region", Mr Barghouthi said.