MIDDLE EAST Fighting in Gaza Strip taints peace-talk efforts

Israeli troops said militants fired missiles and set off a bomb.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- At least eight Palestinians were killed today during some of the fiercest fighting in Gaza in months, complicating efforts by visiting American envoys to revive peace talks.
The gunbattles between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants turned one Gaza neighborhood into a war zone. As paramedics tended to the wounded, militants scrambled through the streets hoisting rocket launchers. A group of boys took cover behind a tin shack as gunfire crackled down a street.
At least five of the dead were armed men, including four from the Islamic Jihad group, and three were thought to be bystanders, a hospital official said.
The fighting erupted near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, in the heart of the teeming Gaza Strip.
The army said militants fired anti-tank missiles and set off a bomb, prompting the troops to fire back. Two Palestinians were killed in the fighting, said Dr. Moawia Hassanain, a Palestinian hospital official.
Later, the army entered a Gaza City neighborhood near Netzarim, and a fierce battle flared between troops and gunmen. At least six other Palestinians were killed, and several were wounded, Hassanain said.
As two Israeli tanks rumbled slowly along one road, a rocket-propelled grenade whizzed just a few yards in front of the two vehicles, leaving a streak of white smoke. The tanks swiveled their barrels and fired machine guns.
Peace talks status
The fighting came as U.S. envoys John Wolf and David Satterfield met with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia. The envoys, who were to meet Israeli officials as well, are trying to revive stalled peace negotiations.
Qureia said the American officials also demanded that he soon meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Qureia has balked at a summit with the Israeli leader until he gets assurances that it will produce results.
"We told them, 'OK, help in the preparation for the meeting,'" Qureia told reporters. "We are not against it. If there is a successful meeting, a meeting with good indications for our people, we are ready."
The meetings came a day after Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders in an effort to get militant groups to declare a halt to attacks on Israelis.
"There are serious efforts to revive peace efforts by the Americans and the Egyptians ... This [Gaza incursion] will undermine the efforts," Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said.
Despite an overall lull in more than three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, Gaza has been the scene of fierce fighting in recent months.
In October, nine Palestinians were killed in fighting in the Rafah refugee camp, a flash point near the Egypt-Gaza border. A few days later, 14 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Nusseirat refugee camp.