Israeli occupation troops shot dead six Palestinians including a television cameraman in a surge of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday, witnesses and medics said. The new bloodshed cast a shadow over U.S. preparations to unveil a "roadmap" peace plan once Palestinians install a reform cabinet, now delayed by a power struggle between President Yasser Arafat and prime minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas.

Dozens of Israeli occupation soldiers raided Nablus's historic old city, or Casbah, encountering scores of Palestinian youths who began throwing stones, Palestinian witnesses said.

Nazih Darwazeh, a 45-year-old cameraman for Palestinian television who also freelanced for the Associated Press, was struck in the face during return fire and died on the way to hospital, Reuters journalists and Palestinian medics said.

After nightfall, more than 40 Israeli tanks and other armored vehicles entered the Gaza refugee camp of Rafah, triggering fighting in which four Palestinians were killed and 40 wounded, witnesses and medics reported.

Israeli occupation army sources said the occupation army fired on and hit three armed men in Rafah after coming under fire at the start of a new raid to root out what it calls "terror activity."

Rafah is a stronghold of resistance men spearheading a two-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian uprising against Israel for an independent state.

They said two of the dead were civilian males aged 14 and 32. The third dead man was 25 but it was not known whether he was a resistance man or ordinary civilian, while the fourth was a 20-year-old resistance fighter. The wounded were both freedom fighters and civilians.

Witnesses said occupation army bulldozers arrived later at the homes of two Islamic resistance men and began demolishing one of them after calling on residents to clear out.

Israeli occupation forces also shot dead a Palestinian freedom fighter in a gun battle as he tried to infiltrate an internationally illegal Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank near the Palestinian town of Jenin, occupation army sources said. Two occupation soldiers and an Israeli policeman were wounded.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian cameraman Nazih Darwazeh films clashes in the West Bank city of Nablus shortly before being shot dead, April 19, 2003 (Jaafar Ashtiyeh, Pool/Reuters)