RAMALLAH (West Bank), Jan 4: Israeli forces mounted a rare raid into the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday, killing four Palestinians and detaining four men, hours before an Israeli-Egyptian summit on peacemaking.

In the latest fighting between rival Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, a Hamas policeman and two security officers loyal to Fatah were killed and 25 other people were wounded, witnesses and hospital officials said.

Smoke rose over the central Ramallah after Israeli armoured vehicles and bulldozers, slamming aside parked cars near the main Manara Square, pushed into the city to carry out what an Israeli army spokeswoman called “routine arrest activity”.

She said four wanted men had been detained.

The raid was the biggest in Ramallah since May, when four Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. Palestinians responded to the latest incursion with gunfire and rocks as pedestrians scrambled for safety.

“This operation proves that Israeli calls for peace and security are false,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement read by a spokesman.

The moderate Palestinian leader, locked in a power struggle with the governing Hamas movement, also appealed for an end to mounting internal violence in the Gaza Strip.

Describing the fighting in Ramallah, Palestinian security sources said an Israeli helicopter had poured machinegun fire into a building near Manara Square. An Israeli army spokesman said the helicopter fired at “an open area”, not at a structure.Hospital officials said four Palestinians had been killed.—Reuters