JABALIYA (Gaza Strip), Dec 21: Palestinian police and anti-Israeli hardliners fought running gunbattles which killed five people and injured more than 60 others here on Friday, just hours after the Hamas said it was suspending suicide attacks in Israel.

The worst Palestinian unrest in years marred Yasser Arafat’s efforts to crack down on radicals, while Israel and Washington urged him to do even more despite the truce announcement by Hamas.

Five Palestinians, four of them unidentified, were killed when clashes erupted between guerillas and police following the funeral of 17-year-old Islamic Jihad member in the Jabaliya refugee camp just north of Gaza City, hospital sources and witnesses said.

The teenager was killed on Thursday during a gunbattle between Palestinian security forces and Hamas members, and witnesses said the clashes started when a group broke away from the procession to fire on a police station.

More than 60 others were also injured in the ensuing violence, they said.

The bloodshed came after Hamas, which has claimed the bulk of recent suicide attacks in Israel, called on its military wing to stop all suicide and mortar attacks against the Jewish state until further notice.

But although Hamas decided to respond to Arafat’s televised call on Sunday for a halt to armed operations against Israel, the movement’s smaller rival Islamic Jihad announced through its representative in Lebanon it would continue its suicide attacks.

The Islamic Jihad leader, Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, also vowed the movement would continue its “resistance” during a speech in a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.

However, Shalah also said his movement would not retaliate against Palestinians for Arafat’s crackdown on guerillas.

The fighting was continuing on Friday afternoon despite calls for calm blared from the loudspeakers atop local mosques.

Hamas called on its fighters to evacuate the area for the sake of Palestinian “unity”.

A delegation from the National and Islamic Forces — an umbrella group which coordinates the Palestinian uprising, and includes Arafat’s Fatah movement, as well as Hamas and Jihad — arrived on the scene in a bid to stop the violence.

Just hours earlier, Israeli tanks and armoured cars moved back into an area of the West Bank they had quit in the morning, though the army said the pullout had been a “tactical change” and not an official withdrawal.

The withdrawal had been seen as a sign that the security situation had improved after a dramatic drop in violence following Arafat’s peace call.

Hamas’s truce call drew a skeptical reaction from Israel, with Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer’s spokesman saying the announcement would be judged “on the facts”.

Yarden Vatikai pointed out that a senior Hamas figure, speaking on condition of anonymity, had said on Wednesday that the group would halt suicide operations, a claim later denied by a Hamas spokesman.

He added that the Palestinian Authority had still not done enough to crack down on radical militants, a view which was echoed by Israel’s chief ally Washington.

The White House acknowledged that Arafat had taken “some positive steps”, but spokesman Ari Fleischer added that “more is required to put an end to the terror attacks.”—AFP