Islamic militants back deal to halt attacks on Israel

ISLAMIC militants have accepted a proposal to halt attacks on Israelis for three months, a senior militia official said yesterday, providing the first confirmation from the militants agreement has been reached.

A formal truce announcement is to be made tomorrow, according to officials.

The militia leader, who spoke on condition neither his name nor the name of his organisation be used, said the trilateral document is now ready.

Palestinian negotiators said on Wednesday that Hamas, the largest of the Islamic groups, and the smaller, Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad signed an accord along with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. Under the agreement, the groups which have carried out attacks on Israel that have claimed hundreds of lives would agree to a three-month ceasefire.

A ceasefire is a key element for starting the US-backed road map peace plan that envisions creating a Palestinian state by 2005. The groups' acceptance of the ceasefire came after four Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed yesterday in a gunfight as soldiers raided two homes while searching for a leading Hamas bombmaker.

In the two-hour battle, soldiers blew up a house and fired more than a dozen tank shells as combat helicopters fired machine guns toward gunmen. The target of the raid,

Adnan al-Ghoul, the chief bombmaker of Hamas, was not present.

Also yesterday, Israeli-Palestinian talks on the terms of an Israeli troop pullback in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Bethlehem in line with the road map yielded real progress, a Palestinian official said.

Negotiators resolved the key sticking point, control over the main north-south road in Gaza.

A troop pullback would be the first major step by Israel toward implementing the peace plan launched on June 4 by President Bush at a Jordan summit.

The plan calls on Israel to return to positions it held before the outbreak of fighting in September 2000 and requires Palestinian security forces to dismantle militias, but Palestinian leaders have said they will not launch a crackdown.

Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, will arrive in the region today as Bush's personal envoy to talk to the Palestinian and Israeli prime ministers about the plan. En route to the Mideast, Rice called on the EU to outlaw the political wing of Hamas to dry up donations to the group, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in bombings and shootings.

Hamas' military wing issued a statement blaming the US for yesterday's Israeli strikes but refrained for the first time from making customary threats of more attacks against Israel.

Israel has shrugged off the emerging truce as an internal Palestinian matter and has said the hunt for militants would not cease.

In yesterday's raid, Israeli commandos surrounded the home of Omran al-Ghoul, a brother of the Hamas bombmaker and himself an operative of the group, in the village of Mujarkha in the central Gaza Strip.

In the ensuing battle between soldiers and dozens of armed Palestinians, Omran al-Ghoul, as well as the bombmaker's 19-year-old son, Mohammed, and an Israeli soldier were killed. In a separate clash nearby, a bystander and another gunman were killed, Palestinian hospital officials said.