Jerusalem  - Israel will free 250 Palestinian prisoners in advance of a Muslim holiday next month, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas when the two met in Jerusalem Monday afternoon.

The two held talks amid a collapsing truce between Israel and the Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip. The truce has been unraveling since last week, as Palestinians fire rockets at southern Israel and Israel targets militants.

Abbas said after his talks with Olmert that Gaza had figured "extensively" in the meeting. He called on the Palestinian factions in the salient to stop firing the "useless" missiles, a call he has made previously, but without success.

Baghdad - Dozens of people were injured in a car bomb a

Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israel was keeping its border crossings with the Gaza Strip shut for a fifth day running Monday, as rocket fire against its southern towns and villages continued.

Militants fired at least seven Gaza-made rockets into Israel in the morning, bringing to at least 134 the number of projectiles launched from Gaza since a fragile truce that had largely held for five months began disintegrating two weeks ago.

Israel said it would allow the entry of some 30 trucks with medical supplies and humanitarian aid into Gaza Monday. But a military spokesman in Tel Aviv said final authorization "depends on what happens during the day."

Tel Aviv/Gaza City - Israel killed four Palestinian militants in an airstrike near Gaza City Sunday morning, hours after Palestinians launched rockets at Israeli border towns.

In a further indication that a five-month-old truce between Israel and the Gaza militias is fast collapsing, Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert said he has ordered the military to submit a plan to "restore full quiet to the south", and the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, said it would "respond heavily to any Zionist offensive or attacks against our people."

Tel Aviv - In response to a resumption of Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel, Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Saturday threatened a military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

"It is possible that the time will come in which a large calculated military operation will be necessary," he said in a speech in the coastal city of Netanya.

He called the firing of rockets into Israeli border cities untolerable and said the Israeli Army is prepared for a large offensive that could be painful for the Palestinian side.

Tel Aviv  - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has approved dozens of construction projects in the occupied West Bank over the past months, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

The vast majority of the projects listed by Ha'aretz are in Jewish settlement blocks which Israel has vowed to keep as part of a future peace deal with the Palestinians.

But some are in isolated settlements located to the east of Israel's West Bank security barrier.