JENIN, Sept 15: Raiding Israeli forces killed six Palestinian militants and four civilians on Wednesday _ the highest single-day Palestinian death toll in the West Bank for more than two years.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon added to pessimism about peace prospects, declaring that Israel was not following the US-backed roadmap plan and could stay in the occupied West Bank for a long time after a planned pullout from Gaza next year.

Mr Sharon spelled out what various Israeli officials have been suggesting for months. The roadmap was derailed sometime ago amid persistent violence and recrimination on both sides.

Israeli forces, sustaining pressure on Palestinian militants in advance of "disengagement" from Gaza and a small wedge of the West Bank next year, killed five militants and an 11-year-old girl bystander during a raid into the West Bank city of Nablus.

Four of the slain militants were from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, and the other from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Israeli military sources said five "senior terrorists" had been targeted in the pre-dawn operation.

Hours later, Israeli special forces, backed up by helicopter gunships, killed four Palestinians - a militant, a policeman and two civilians - at a car repair shop in the northern city of Jenin.

They had earlier said all four dead were militants. An army spokeswoman said all the Palestinians were armed and they were shot inside a cafe. Two others were arrested. The two raids killed the most Palestinians in one day since April 2002, at the height of a massive Israeli offensive against militants.

"This is a big crime that cannot be forgiven and is part of Israeli determination to escalate aggression," Mr Arafat said at his Ramallah headquarters, where Israeli forces confine him.

Israel has cranked up efforts to eliminate militants to prevent them proclaiming victory once Mr Sharon carries out his plan to "disengage" from conflict by evacuating more than 8,000 settlers from Gaza and the northern West Bank next year.

ROADMAP AT DEAD-END: Many Palestinians suspect unilateral "disengagement" is a cover for cementing Israel's grip on swathes of the West Bank, where most of the 240,000 Jewish settlers live. They believe it will rule out a viable state promised them by the roadmap.

But US President George Bush has endorsed Mr Sharon's plan in hopes it might revive roadmap peacemaking. Israeli officials have said the plan, launched by Mr Bush in June last year, has no chance until Palestinian leaders curb militants targeting Israelis and carry out reform. But Mr Sharon's right-wing Likud party also rejects Palestinian statehood in principle.

His remarks in a Jewish new year interview with the daily Yedioth Ahronoth were his clearest yet on the status of the roadmap, which his cabinet had accepted only under US pressure. "Even now we are not following the roadmap," he said.

It charts reciprocal steps, including an end to Palestinian attacks and halt to Israeli settlement activity, to Palestinian statehood. But deep mistrust and enmity has stymied the process.

"It could very well be that after the (Gaza) evacuation, there will be a very long period in which nothing else will happen," Mr Sharon said. "(For) additional steps, there must be a change in Palestinian strategy and there is not even the tiniest sign pointing to such a change taking place." -Reuters