NABLUS, July 6: Six Palestinians and an official in an elite Israeli army unit were killed in a flare-up of violence in the occupied territories on Tuesday, as diplomats from the Middle East quartet met in a bid to revive the moribund roadmap.

Four of the Palestinians and the Israeli were killed during an army operation at a refugee camp in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank, while two other gunmen were shot dead near an army post in the Gaza Strip.

Three soldiers were also wounded, one of them seriously, during the operation in the Nablus region, carried out by the elite Marine Commando unit and which the army said was aimed at arresting wanted Palestinian militants.

Two of the four Palestinians killed in Nablus were armed but the other two, including a university lecturer, were civilians, Palestinian security and hospital sources said.

The armed men holed up in a building that was encircled by soldiers who opened fire, while a helicopter gunship fired two rockets at it, Palestinian security sources said.

One of the armed Palestinians was Yamen Faraj, 27, local head of the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was killed along with Amjad Arar, one of his lieutenants.

EXECUTION ALLEGED: A neighbour said that he had witnessed Israeli soldiers execute Arar after he had been hit in the legs. "The soldiers saw me and ordered me to leave, saying they would not hurt him," Omar Jaber said. "As I was walking away, I saw the soldiers firing bursts at Amjad."