Hopes for progress in securing a halt in Middle East violence were bedraggled tonight, with Israel denying an announcement in Cairo that a ceasefire had been agreed and Palestinians reporting no fruit from security talks.
Israeli Foreign Minister Mr Shimon Peres said tonight that, contrary to what Egyptian President Mr Hosni Mubarak has said earlier after the two met in Cairo, no ceasefire agreement had been concluded with the Palestinians.
Army radio quoted Mr Peres as saying that Mr Mubarak "had made a mistake" and that "no agreement on a ceasefire had been signed."
Mr Mubarak told reporters after meeting Mr Peres that "The Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to a ceasefire, on both sides," citing a letter he had received from Israel's hardline Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon.
However, Mr Mubarak did not say when a truce would take effect and both Mr Peres and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mr Amr Mussa stopped short of announcing a ceasefire agreement.
Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat was reportedly surprised today when he learned that Egyptian President Mr Hosni Mubarak had announced a ceasefire accord.
Mr Yossi Sarid of Israel's opposition secular Meretz party told army radio he was talking to Mr Arafat when the news was given to the Palestinian leader, who immediately called Egyptian Foreign Minister Mr Amr Mussa, Sarid said.
"Yes, he appeared quite surprised," he said of Arafat.
However the outcome of a series of meetings between Palestinian and Israeli security officials in the West Bank today to study ways of easing the blockade around autonomous Palestinian towns yielded no surprises.
These meetings were held in the eight autonomous Palestinian towns in the West Bank and they made "no progress," a Palestinian security official said.
Violence continued unabated on the West Bank and Gaza Strip today. Mortar bombs fell on the Kfar Darom settlement, causing no casualties, according to an Israeli military spokesman, and a car bomb exploded as a school bus carrying children from a Jewish settlement passed through the West Bank, killing a Palestinian.
Two further blasts rocked a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank and the Israeli port city of Netanya, injuring no one.
This evening, seven Palestinians, including two policemen, were wounded by Israeli fire during clasehs with the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources sources said.
"Five Palestinian civilians were wounded, two seriously, during clashes with Israeli soldiers guarding Israeli bulldozers which were carrying out destruction work near the Abasan neighbourhood to the east of Khan Yunis," hospital sources said.
Earlier, the Israeli army fired on an Palestinian intelligence post near Deir alBalah in the southern Gaza Strip, wounding two Palestinian police officers, a security source said.
An Israeli soldier was wounded by shrapnel near the Morag settlement in the southern Gaza Strip, a military spokesman said.
AFP