Gaza - Extending an olive branch to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of unity talks in Cairo next month, the Islamic Hamas movement released 17 members of the president's Fatah movement it had detained in the Gaza Strip in July.

The 17 were among dozens of Fatah activists arrested by Hamas police after a car bomb killed five Hamas members in Western Gaza City in late July.

Damascus - Talks to reconcile differences between feuding Palestinian factions could fall apart if Egyptian mediators refuse to consider input from the factions, a source close to the negotiations said Wednesday.

"Egypt told the Palestinian factions that it would not consider the comments and amendments made by the factions on the draft submitted by Cairo," said Khaled Abdel Meguid, secretary of the follow-up committee of a national meeting of Palestinians.

Ramallah - Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 68-year-old Palestinian Wednesday morning in the village of Yamoun, west of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, according to the official Voice of Pa

Gaza - Three Palestinians were killed Saturday when a tunnel used for smuggling beneath the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed, medics and witnesses said.

Witnesses said the three had been working on the tunnel, which collapsed near its end on the Egyptian side. The dead were taken to Egyptian hospitals in the northern Sinai city of al-Arish.

Palestinian medics said the deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed in such tunnels to 50.

Ramallah - Nearly 600 Palestinian police began deploying Saturday in the West Bank city of Hebron following an agreement Thursday between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The deployment of the force loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah is part of a Palestinian plan more effectively to enforce law and order in several cities in the occupied West Bank.

The PA says many "wanted criminals" have taken refuge in areas which security forces had not been authorized to access. Hebron is considered a stronghold of Hamas supporters, the Islamic movement which routed pro-Abbas forces in the Gaza Strip last year.

Jerusalem  - A Palestinian stabbed to death an elderly Israeli passerby Thursday, and wounded a police officer, in the Jewish settlement of Gilo, south of Jerusalem, police said.

The Palestinian was stopped by two police officers and asked to identify himself, but he drew a knife and stabbed one of the officers.

The officer then shot the stabber, but he escaped and while running away fatally stabbed a second Israeli, an 86-year-old civilian whom he ran into, a witness who chased after the attacker and overpowered him said.