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.

The Palestinian group is only willing to give up Shalit, who was seized in a cross-border raid two years ago, in exchange for a number of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons.

When Al-Hayat asked him why rockets were still be fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza against Israel in violation of the ceasefire accord, Abu Marsuk said the rockets were not fired by Hamas members.

He accused Mohammed Dahlan, a deputy of the rival Fatah organisation and former head of the Palestinian security service, of being behind the latest attacks. (dpa)