Two suspected Palestinian militants died and an Israeli soldier was wounded late Saturday in an exchange of gunfire near the border of the Gaza Strip with Israel, the Israeli army announced.

Soldiers spotted the two Palestinians near the security barrier separating Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza and opened fire, killing them after a gun battle lasting some 20 minutes, an army spokesman said.

A Syrian-Saudi initiative aimed at finding a solution to the Lebanese crisis waits for a signal from Saudi King Abdullah, As-Safir newspaper reported Friday.

It cited a source who followed up on a visit to Paris by Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday ruled out negotiations with Israel as long as it refuses to freeze settlement building, but did not specify if he would agree to indirect talks.

"We will not accept negotiations as long as settlements continue," Abbas told reporters in Cairo after more than one hour of talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit urged the international community on Wednesday to call an "end game" in Middle East peace talks and set clear deadlines for reaching Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

"The Egyptian view is as follows: Let's agree on an end game," Abul Gheit said after talks in Sofia with his Bulgarian counterpart Nikolay Mladenov.

Marine experts on Wednesday quizzed witnesses to shark attacks as beaches at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh remained closed after a woman was torn apart by a shark.

South Sinai governor Mohammed Shosha told Agence France Presse authorities would announce later in the day whether they would reopen beaches which are visited each year by between three and four million tourists.

The Middle East peace process lay in tatters Wednesday after Washington admitted defeat in its efforts to secure an Israeli freeze on settlement building, the Palestinians' condition for resuming talks.

Speaking late on Tuesday, U.S. officials admitted top-level efforts to coax Israel into imposing new curbs on West Bank settlement construction had gone nowhere, prompting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to declare a crisis in peace efforts but backslapping among Israeli hardliners.

Israel carried out two air raids on the Gaza Strip early Wednesday without causing any casualties, Palestinian security officials said.

The attacks came after Palestinian militants fired two projectiles into southern Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

The death toll from northern Israel's massive forest fire rose to 42 on Monday as Haifa's police chief, Ahuva Tomer, died in hospital of her burn injuries, public radio reported.

Tomer, 52, one of Israel's few female police chiefs, died in Rambam hospital in the Mediterranean city of Haifa where she worked, the radio reported, citing medical sources.

Israel's plan to pull its troops out of northern Ghajar, a disputed village on the flashpoint border with Lebanon, is likely to prove more of a headache than a political victory for Beirut, experts say.

"The people of Ghajar do not want to be part of Lebanon," said Timur Goksel, former senior adviser of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), of the village's 2,200 residents -- none of whom is Lebanese.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Moqdad stated that Lebanese-Syrian ties "cannot be normal if the situation in Lebanon is not normal," reported the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper on Sunday.

He said: "Syria will not interfere in Lebanon in the interests of any side and the Lebanese officials are responsible for their country."