Palestinians execute woman 'collaborator'

The alleged collaboration led to a militia chief's death

The body of a Palestinian woman accused of collaborating with Israeli forces has been found in the West Bank town of Tulkarm.

Correspondents say Ikhlas Khouli, 35, is the first woman to be executed by the Palestinians as a suspected collaborator with the Israelis.

A suspected collaborator is led to execution by Palestinian police in 2001

A member of the militant group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said it had seized her from her house and videotaped a confession before shooting her as a warning to others.

The militia member said Khouli had admitted recruiting her 18-year-old son Baker to assist her.

Baker Khouli, who has been held by the militia since Thursday, had allegedly told his mother of the movements of a local chief of the militia, Ziad Daas.

Dozens executed

Daas and his deputy were killed by Israeli forces on 7 August.

Al-Aqsa is an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah group.

Dozens of Palestinian men have been executed as suspected collaborators since the beginning of the uprising - or intifada - in September 2000.

The Israelis have continued West Bank round-up operations

The BBC's James Reynolds says the killings are usually brutal and occasionally public to deter others from helping Israel.

The Israeli intelligence agencies rely heavily on their information to tackle militants.

On Friday, a member of Al-Aqsa, Mohammed Hatem Hout, 26, was killed by Israeli soldiers arriving in an armoured vehicle to enforce a nightly curfew in Jenin.

Deal in trouble

Representatives of Palestinian national and Islamic groups have been meeting on Sunday in Gaza City to try to agree on a unified approach to the conflict with Israel.

Some groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have already rejected a security deal struck with Israel last week saying it would undermine the Palestinian uprising.

Israel is maintaining its West Bank security operations as a deal that paved the way for a withdrawal from Palestinian population centres in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remains stalled.

The operations included:

A raid on Jenin that injured three people, including two children, according to Palestinian security sources.

The arrest of 10 suspected Palestinian militants across the West Bank, including a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abdel Halim Dana, in Hebron.

The detention of five Palestinians in the town of Salfit, south of Nablus.

Israel on Saturday said it would not carry out any further redeployments until the Palestinian security forces took more effective action against Palestinian militants.

Palestinian officials accused Israel of reneging on the agreement, saying Israel had no intention of pulling its forces back.