RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Authority has arrested several Hamas members on suspicion of organizing and executing two attacks on Israeli settlers, a senior official said on Tuesday.
The Palestinian security official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that two groups of suspects had been arrested but did not specify exactly how many members of the Islamist movement had been detained.
The first drive-by shooting on August 31 claimed the lives of four settlers, including a pregnant woman, and the second a day later wounded two settlers near Ramallah.
Hamas claimed responsibility for both attacks, which cast a pall over the relaunch in Washington of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Hamas accused the Palestinian Authority of arresting hundreds of its members in the wake of the killings. Previously the Western-backed Palestinian leadership had denied making any arrests in connection with the attacks.
The attacks were condemned by both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas saying the shooting was intended to "disrupt the political process."
The Islamist Hamas movement, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since June 2007, has vehemently opposed the new talks and insisted Abbas does not have the right to negotiate on behalf of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Palestinian insurgents fired a mortar round from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday narrowly missing a kindergarten in a kibbutz in southern Israel, the military said, as Jews prepared to mark their New Year.
There were no casualties or damage from the mortar fire against the collective settlement several kilometers (a few miles) from Gaza’s northeastern border with Israel.
"A mortar shell fired from the Gaza Strip fell near a nursery school in a kibbutz in the Shaar HaNegev region," a spokeswoman said. "There were no injuries or damage."
It was the third such incident of rocket fire in as many days and came as Israel imposed a precautionary closure on the Palestinian territories ahead of celebrations for Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashana, which starts at sundown.
Israel frequently closes the main transit points into the West Bank during major holidays, although Gaza, which was seized by the radical Islamist Hamas movement in 2007, is under a permanent blockade.
