Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians today in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the bloodiest violent outbreak in months.
Three of those who were killed belonged to a militant group within Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement suspected of shooting to death a Jewish settler in a roadside ambush on Thursday.
Nabi Abu Rdainah, Abbas's top aide, accused Israel of inflaming tensions and seeking to torpedo US-backed efforts to renew stalled peace talks.
The violence came a day before the anniversary of a three-week Gaza war that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Peace talks have been frozen since.
Soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Gaza, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
A Hamas security source said the three shot at daybreak were apparently civilians collecting scrap metal in an industrial zone near the Israeli border.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, soldiers surrounded the homes of three members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group of Abbas's Fatah group, and killed all three.
The shootings infuriated Palestinian leaders of Abbas's Western-backed government and threatened to upset a balance of power with Hamas Islamists, who seized Gaza two years ago and continue to seek to widen their influence in the West Bank.
"This grave Israeli escalation shows Israel is not interested in peace and is trying to explode the situation," Nabil Abu Rdainah, a top aide to Abbas, said.
"Israel is torpedoing international and American efforts to restart peace talks," Rdainah said.