West Bank violence halts Middle East peace talks A Palestinian official said two meetings with Israeli negotiators planned for Monday - one supposedly in the West Bank city of Jericho - had been cancelled and no decision taken on whether to re-schedule. "It's not in our interests to negotiate but our people are being killed," the official said. There have been almost 4,000 Israeli military raids against Palestinians this year but none this violent. We are talking about the lives of three people here. Israeli officials declined to confirm or deny the reports. But Marif Harf, a state department spokeswoman, told Reuters: ""I can assure you that no meetings have been canceled. The parties are engaged in serious and sustained negotiations, Mayhem ensued after Israeli border police entered the crowded camp shortly before dawn and tried to arrest Yousef Abdul Rahim Khattib, 25, an activist in the Palestinian Fatah group whom locals said had previously spent nine years in prison and is suspected by Israel of organising stone throwing attacks on their forces. After police used explosives to blow open the door of his home, Mr Khattib initially escaped to the upper storey before jumping on to the roofs of two adjoining buildings. He was finally caught in a storeroom after officers forced entry to one of the buildings. The noise and disturbance brought large numbers of inhabitants from their homes, many of whom climbed to the roofs of low rise buildings and began hurling missiles, witnesses told The Telegraph. Outnumbered, the police requested help from the Israeli army, which deployed soldiers in armoured vehicles and jeeps. Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian youth in the Qalandiya refugee camp (AFP) "It was like a battlefield," said Ahmed Lafi, 25, a journalism student at Ramallah's Bir Zeit University "Nobody was on the roof simply watching. People were throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails, iron bars, even satellite dishes. The Israeli forces panicked and some of them were screaming like women. One of their jeeps broke down and another was almost burned. One group of soldiers got trapped. At one point, they thought they had lost a soldier and started breaking into houses looking for him. Two of the dead men, Younis Jemal Jahjour, 25, a correspondence student at Al-Qods University, and Jihad Aslan, 19, described as a high school student, were on roof tops when they were shot, witnesses said. Ramadan Aslan, 42, Jihad's cousin, said he had been throwing stones at Israeli forces. "He was on the roof top of the butcher's shop and I saw a soldier opening the door of his jeep and opening at a group of stone throwers," Mr Aslan said. "{Jihad} was hit by one bullet in his hand and two in his chest." The third fatality, Rabeen Abed Fares, 35, a father-of-five, was said to have been shot after being caught between Israeli forces and two groups of stone-throwers after coming out of his house to go to work. The blood from his injuries could be seen on a wall near where he was struck. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces, said soldiers had been forced to fire in self-defence. "Large violent crowds such as this one which significantly outnumber the security forces leave no choice other than to resort to live fire," he said.