A 60-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead and four other pensioners were badly injured when Israeli troops opened fire in the southern Gaza Strip late yesterday, Palestinian medical sources said. Salim Bayumi was walking just outside his home in the border town of Rafah when a sudden burst of gunfire erupted from an Israeli tank, they said. He was critically injured in the chest and died shortly afterwards. Four other elderly Palestinians, two men and two women all aged between 60 and 65, were also badly wounded in the same incident, they said. Palestinian security sources said it was not clear why the tank opened fire in their direction. The latest killing comes as the Palestinian leadership accused Israel yesterday of sabotaging peace efforts and threatening regional stability with its decisions to build fences deep inside the West Bank and new homes in the settlements. The Israeli cabinet okayed on Wednesday the extension of its barrier to seal off the West Bank, which would leave a gap in the most controversial area but erect a series of other fences to protect Jewish settlements which officials admitted would be linked up to the main barrier in a few months. Speaking to reporters outside his Ramallah headquarters, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat described the barrier as the "wall of racism". Meanwhile, military sources announced yesterday that, for the third time in two weeks, anti-Israeli bomb attacks were thwarted in the West Bank. Eight Palestinians were also wounded when an Israeli tank fired a shell during an army incursion into the central Gaza Strip town of Deir Al Balah, Palestinian security and medical sources said. During the raid, Israeli troops demolished a house and razed 2.5 acres of Palestinian land, the security sources said. **Israel to Build More Settlements in West Bank*** Israel plans to build 565 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, violating a U.S.-backed peace plan and angering Palestinians already seething over plans to build a security barrier deep into the West Bank. Announcements for the new housing units appeared in an Israeli newspaper on Thursday, inviting contractors to bid on the projects. The "road map" plan requires a complete freeze in all construction in some 150 Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel seized during the 1967 war. The government announcement that it planned to build 565 housing units in three West Bank settlements came a day after the Cabinet approved a portion of a security barrier of fences and walls that runs into the West Bank to shield key settlements - as well as Israel - from Palestinians bombers. On Thursday, incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia announced he would submit his proposed Cabinet for approval to the Palestinian Parliament on Wednesday. He then accused Israel of trying to circumvent peace talks by seizing land Palestinians want for an eventual state. "The Israeli decision to continue building the wall and today's decision to build 600 settlement units proves that the Israeli government is not serious about peace and that its goal is to draw the borders unilaterally and to sabotage the possibility for establishing a viable Palestinian state," he said. **PHOTO CAPTION*** With a mosque's minaret in the foreground, workers at a hilltop of the village of Sawahreh work at a construction site for part of the separation fence Israeli is building between east Jerusalem and the West Bank Thursday Oct. 2, 2003. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)