Tel Aviv, Dec 26 - Israeli troops killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank early Saturday, an Israeli military spokeswoman and media reports said.

The military spokeswoman said Israeli soldiers patrolling the border fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip noticed several suspicious figures crawling toward the fence and opened fire.

When the figures still continued crawling, an aircraft was also called in to fire at them, and reported a direct hit.

Tel Aviv, Dec 25 : An overwhelming majority of Israelis support releasing and deporting hundreds of jailed "heavyweight" Palestinian militants in exchange for an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip for more than three years, a poll published Friday revealed.

The survey also found that a majority think Gilad Shalit, snatched June 25, 2006 during a cross-border raid launched from the Gaza Strip, will be released soon.

Hamas, which is holding Shalit, is demanding Israel release around 1,000 Palestinian militants from its jails, in return for the soldier.

Tel Aviv, Dec. 23 : Due to Obama administration’s diplomatic approach to Tehran, Israel, which has been demanding aggressive action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, has been left in lurch leaving the Islamic republic emerge victorious in ‘secret war games’ – a simulated conflict staged by the Tel Aviv University.

Tel Aviv, Dec 12 :UN and Israeli vessels were Saturday searching for 11 crew from a cargo ship that sank off the coast of the northern Israeli port of Haifa early in the day, media reports said.

The Israeli-owned, Togolese-flagged Salla 2 was transporting building materials from Greece to Haifa when it sank some 80 km from its destination.

The ship issued a mayday call at around 2 am. A NATO ship and Cypriot boats were sent to scan the area. Only one of its 12 Ukrainian crew members was rescued.

Israel sent air force and naval troops to the area to reinforce search operations.(DPA)

Tel Aviv  - The Israeli Air Force attacked what the military said was a weapons factory and two smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip before dawn Thursday, a spokeswoman said.

The triple airstrike was a response to recent rocket fire into Israeli territory from Gaza, the military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said.

She said Gaza militants had fired some 15 rockets and mortar shells at Israel over the past month.

Some 270 have been fired at Israel since last winter's Gaza war, she said.

Israel has responded with pin-point airstrikes to the sporadic, ongoing fire, although since the offensive, both it and the radical Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza have largely observed an unspoken truce.  (dpa)

Tel Aviv  - It was either a case of extreme homesickness, or uncontrollable talkativeness, or possibly even both, but a Filipino caregiver in Israel managed to run up a bill amounting to thousands of dollars - on her employer's telephone.

According to the Y-net news site Thursday, the 26-year-old woman has been arrested, and has confessed to the charges.

Her employer's suspicions were aroused when he received a bill for 50,000 Israeli shekels (13,000 dollars) for telephone calls to the Philippines.

Tel Aviv  - Tehran will probably find new routes to smuggle arms to the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group, Israeli defence officials said Thursday - a day after Israeli commandos seized a ship en route from Iran to Lebanon with hundreds of tons of weapons on board.

The unnamed officials told Israel Army Radio that they thought the seizure of the ship, the German-owned, Antiuguan-flagged Francop, would not deter Iran from continuing its efforts to arm Hezbollah.

Tel Aviv  - The Israeli Navy overpowered a cargo ship with weaponry and ammunition hidden on board overnight, the military said Wednesday.

The Antigua-flagged ship was stopped some 160 kilometres off the Israeli coast, military spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibowitz told the German Press Agency dpa.

She said the weapons and ammunition were discovered hidden in "civilian containers" when the navy carried out a security check of the ship. (dpa)

Tel Aviv - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak Thursday welcomed a statement by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that Damascus was ready to resume suspended talks with Israel.

Barak said although Syria continued its support for radical Islamist movements in the region, he believed Assad's call for resuming peace talks was genuine.

"Syria is a cornerstone within any possible stable regional peace agreement," the minister told Israel Radio, adding a peace treaty was both an Israeli and a Syrian interest.

Tel Aviv - Israel said Thursday that the US-, French- and Russian-proposed uranium exchange deal with Iran would only delay by one year Tehran's alleged progress toward a nuclear weapon.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the downside of the agreement was that it granted international recognition to uranium enrichment by Iran.

He urged the international community to go further and demand a complete stop to enrichment on Iranian soil.

Tel Aviv  - Support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party has grown since he took office over six months ago, according to an opinion poll published Friday.

If elections were held today, the Likud would get six more mandates to become the largest party in the Israeli parliament, said the survey by the Dahaf polling institute, commissioned by Israel's biggest-selling daily, Yediot Ahronot.

Tel Aviv - Israeli archeologists have found the 1,700-year footprints of people working on a mosaic during the times that the Romans were ruling the region.

The imprints of bare feet and sandals - sized 34, 37, 42 and 44 - were discovered under the Lod Mosaic, one of the largest and best-preserved mosaic floors ever discovered in Israel.

The mosaic floor is believed to be part of a villa that belonged to a wealthy man from the 4th century AD. At the time, what is now Israel and the Palestinian areas was part of the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire.

Tel Aviv - Israel threatened Wednesday that it would not renew peace talks with the Palestinians, unless a United Nations report accusing it of having committed war crimes during last winter's Gaza war was dropped.

"Our argument is that as long as the Goldstone report is on the table and everywhere they are quoting it and supporting it - also states that are considered our friends - we cannot make progress in the peace process," Israel's ambassador to the UN Gabriella Shalev said.

Gaza/Tel Aviv  - Israel bombed two more smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border early Wednesday, responding to a rocket attack by Palestinian militants, the military said.

Three Palestinians in the tunnels were reported injured in the 0100 (2300 GMT) air strike.

An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said the tunnels hit in the southern Gaza town of Rafah were used for smuggling weapons into the strip.

He said that Palestinian militants launched one Gaza-produced rocket into southern Israeli territory Tuesday.

Tel Aviv - Israel is concerned about the future of its strategic alliance with Turkey, Israeli officials were quoted as saying Monday.

The concern follows Ankara's decision to bar Israel from participating in an October 12-24 air force exercise in the city of Konya, in Turkey's central Anatolia region.

Ankara reportedly told Israel it was worried the fighter jets it would send to participate in the exercise were used in last winter's Gaza war.

Tel Aviv  - Israel was set to free 20 female Palestinian prisoners Friday in exchange for a sign-of-life video of an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for more than three years in the Gaza Strip.

The prisoners are slated to be taken to a West Bank checkpoint at the same time that Israel receives the one-minute video, reportedly shot recently, of Gilad Shalit.

Tel Aviv  - Israel will close off the West Bank from midnight Thursday until October 10, the Israeli military spokesman announced Thursday afternoon.

The closure will last for the duration of the Jewish festival of Sukkot (booths), which begins at sundown Friday and ends at sunset on Saturday October 10.

A statement from the military spokesman's office said that persons in need of medical care will not be affected by the closure.

Tel Aviv  - The Israel Air Force bombed three weapons smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip border overnight, the military said Wednesday.

The triple airstrike in the town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, came after militants launched two projectiles from Gaza at southern Israel late Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.

She said that since the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, which started at sunset Sunday and ended at sundown Monday, Gaza militants had launched three rockets and one mortar shell from the strip at southern Israel.

Tel Aviv / London  - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak will not change his plans and return to Israel from a visit to Britain, despite an attempt by Palestinian groups to obtain an arrest warrant against him in London, the minister's bureau said Tuesday.

"The minister will not return early to Israel," Barak's bureau told the German Press Agency dpa.

Tel Aviv  - The Palestinians should not demand an end to all settlement activity before entering peace talks with Israel, Israeli President Shimon Peres said Tuesday hours ahead of a three-way Mideast peace summit in New York.

The Palestinians should drop their precondition for resuming peace talks with Israel, Peres was quoted by Israeli media as saying.