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Suspects in killings found: Fayyad

Palestinian supporters of Hamas call on Egypt to open its border with the Gaza Strip at a protest in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on Saturday. Egypt is requiring around 2,000 Palestinians who arrived in Egypt on their way home from a pilgrimage to return to the Gaza Strip through an Israeli-controlled border crossing. PHOTO: AP

The Palestinian prime minister said that his security forces had arrested a number of suspects in the killings of two off-duty Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and had given Israeli authorities weapons taken from the dead men by their attackers.

Sharing a podium on Saturday with Israeli President Shimon Peres at an economic conference near Tel Aviv, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad expressed "heartfelt" condolences to the families of the Israelis and sought to limit diplomatic fallout for peace talks that just restarted.

"In spite of our best efforts, from time to time our relations get tested with an incident like this unfortunately," Fayyad said. "This is a sad reality. It's something that we have to deal with."

Peres responded positively, speaking, like Fayyad, in English.

"The way you expressed yourself -- and your government did -- on the last incident is encouraging for us," he said. "It was a painful experience, but we are listening very carefully to your reaction, both in what you said and what you do."

The two armed off-duty soldiers were hiking on Friday in hills north of the Palestinian town of Hebron in the West Bank when they were attacked by a group of Palestinian gunmen in a car.

They returned fire and killed one of their attackers before they died.

Both the Israelis were in their 20s and residents of the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, close to Hebron where about 500 Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among some 160,000 Palestinians in Hebron in an atmosphere of mutual hostility.

A female companion hiking with the soldiers, also from Kiryat Arba, fled the attack and escaped unharmed after hiding among trees.

A statement from the Yesha settlers' council blamed the attack on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's recent initiative to seek Cabinet approval for the release of Palestinians involved in failed attacks on Israelis -- an effort to trade them for an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants in June last year.

The killings posed a new challenge for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations formally relaunched at a US-hosted Mideast summit last month.

A key Israeli demand is that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rein in Palestinian militant groups and Fayyad said on Saturday the arrests were proof of his government's determination to do so.

"We have suspects in custody already. We are coordinating and cooperating with the Israeli security services, weapons have already been returned to Israeli security in connection with this particular incident," he said. "So it's not only strong words of condemnation, it's action."

Fayyad did not say how many suspects had been arrested or give further details and the Israeli military had no immediate confirmation of the arrests.
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