RAMALLAH, Aug 23: Palestinian officials said on Saturday it would be hard to heed US calls for a crackdown on armed groups so long as Israel waged military reprisals against militant groups.

Violence has spiralled in recent days — jeopardizing a US-backed roadmap — after Israel assassinated a senior Hamas leader in retaliation for the killing of 20 people in a suicide bomb attack on a bus earlier this week.

U.S. President George Bush on Friday called on the Palestinians to crack down on militants, a key requirement of the roadmap, which paves the way for an end to three years of violence and the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005.

“If the Palestinians want to see their own state, they’ve got to dismantle the terrorist networks,” Mr Bush told reporters.

But the Palestinian Authority said a crackdown was impossible so long as Israeli forces continued raids in the West Bank and Gaza Strip unleashed after the bombing. “Now when the Palestinian territories are full of tanks...I think that it will hinder any effort that we will take,” Information Minister Nabil Amr told reporters.

Prospects of fresh bloodshed appeared likely as Hamas and other militant groups vowed to avenge Israel’s killing of prominent Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, and Israel promised to strike more militant leaders.

Vows of revenge by tens of thousands of mourners at Abu Shanab’s funeral were joined by a Hamas call to “all our cells of fighters in Palestine to strike in every corner of the Jewish state”.

An Israeli security official said on Friday the killing of Abu Shanab was “just the beginning” and that Israel planned “serious retaliation on the terrorist infrastructure” following the bus bombing.

US ENVOY: Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat asked senior U.S. envoy John Wolf in a meeting in the West Bank to pressure Israel to halt military reprisals so “the Palestinian Authority can take action against militants”, a senior Palestinian official said.