Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian gunman in a raid in a West Bank refugee camp today and a leading militant group vowed retaliation "like an earthquake" but stopped short of ending a frayed ceasefire.
The killing stoked Israeli-Palestinian tensions days after a Texas summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and US President George W. Bush designed to provide impetus for Israel's planned mid-year withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing as a "serious violation" of the ceasefire he and Sharon declared in February. Israeli officials said the army reserved the right to go after "ticking bombs", militants planning imminent attacks.
It was Israel's first killing of a militant in more than a month and followed Mr Sharon's accusations that Mr Abbas, elected in January to succeed the late Yasser Arafat was not doing enough to rein in militants as he had promised.
The two sides gave conflicting accounts of the shooting in Balata camp in the West Bank city of Nablus.
The Israeli army said soldiers had tried to arrest a wanted man suspected of plotting suicide attacks in Israel on orders from the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah. It said troops shot him only after he opened fire on them.
"If he had succeeded in carrying out attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, this could have disrupted the (truce) agreements," said an army officer, declining to be named. "This is why we took action."
Palestinians said Israeli undercover troops jumped from a car and started shooting without provocation, hitting the militant in an ensuing gunbattle. Soldiers took him to an Israeli hospital, where he died of his wounds.
The man was identified as Ibrahim Isneiri, a member of al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah national movement led by Mr Abbas.