Three Palestinian resistance men , an Israeli officer and two Israeli civilians were killed on Tuesday in bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that included shootouts at a border freight terminal and an activist hideout. The surge in violence cast a new shadow on U.S. efforts to press ahead with a peacemaking "road map" that calls for end to Israeli-Palestinian fighting and the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. In what the resistance Islamic group Hamas called revenge for Israel's killing of one of its top commanders, a resistance man hurled hand grenades and sprayed automatic weapons fire in the Karni terminal where goods move between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Two Israeli workers were killed and three wounded before occupation soldiers and armed guards shot the attacker dead, the army said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli occupation soldiers killed a Hamas resistance man who shot at occupation troops who came to arrest him and two other activists holed up in an apartment building in the West Bank city of Nablus.

An army lieutenant was shot dead in the incident, another soldier was wounded and two of the wanted men were taken into custody, the army said.

REVENGE

Hamas said it mounted the Karni assault to avenge an Israeli air strike that killed senior Hamas leader Sa'ad al-Arbeed, one of his deputies and five other Palestinians a week ago in Gaza City.

Hamas has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings during the 30-month Palestinian uprising for statehood and Israel has vowed to destroy its armed infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

In further violence, a resistance man from the Islamic Jihad group was killed by rockets fired from an Israeli army watchtower in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, witnesses said.

Islamic Jihad said Abdel-Hamid Abu el-Eish was one of its field commanders.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, the army demolished the home of a Hamas militant. An army statement said he had tried to carry out an attack in the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba on April 5.

At least 1,993 Palestinians and 732 Israelis have been killed since the uprising began in September 2000.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinans carry the body of Mazen Freitekh, who was killed during an operation by the Israeli army in the West Bank city of Nablus, April 15, 2003. Three Palestinian resistance men , an Israeli officer and two Israeli civilians were killed in bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that included shootouts at a border freight terminal and a resistance man hideout. Photo by Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters