Damascus  - A senior official with the radical Palestinian group Hamas said in an interview Friday that the group had temporarily broken off talks with Israel on a prisoner exchange involving captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Mussa Abu Marsuk, deputy politburo chief of Hamas, told the London-based pan-Arab paper Al Hayat that the move was taken after Israel had on several times closed the border crossing with the Gaza Strip in violation of the two sides' ceasefire agreement.

Hamas had now called off a round of negotiations which was to have taken place next week in Egypt, he added.