WASHINGTON/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 30 November — Israeli troops killed two Palestinian men at a West Bank checkpoint and three Israelis were killed in a bomb attack on a bus in northern Israel yesterday in fresh violence that marred a new US peace mission.

Palestinian witnesses and medics said the two men were killed after Israeli troops opened fire on a van which tried to bypass a checkpoint in the northern West Bank.

An Israeli police spokesman said the blast occurred on the bus traveling between the town of Hadera and the city of Afula and that it was "a bomb attack". He was not sure if it was a suicide attack.

In a separate incident, Israeli military sources said Palestinians wounded two Israelis in a drive-by shooting near the West Bank village of Baqaa Al-Sharqiya near the border with Israel.

The continuing violence posed a challenge to the US peace drive, as envoy Anthony Zinni pressed on with a new round of talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials. His initial meetings this week with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat brought no breakthrough.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he expected a timetable for Israeli-Palestinian peace to come from US mediation efforts. Powell had disappointed Palestinians and other Arabs by omitting any mention of a timetable from his Nov. 19 speech, which reactivated the US role in Middle East peacemaking. Speaking to reporters after talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, Powell said that a timetable would come "in due course" and the United States would not impose one. "I know some commentators wanted to see a timetable, but I think that will come in due course now that Gen. Zinni is on the ground talking to both sides," he said.

Maher said Powell’s description of Israel as an occupier — during a major foreign policy speech last week — was unprecedented. Maher, speaking at Brookings Institution, said Powell’s speech was significant because, for the first time, "a US official named the source of the problem in the Middle East — which is the occupation of Palestine." Maher said Powell’s speech stressed the importance of dignity for the Palestinian people, and Powell reiterated the basis of a solution between the two countries was UN Resolutions 242 and 338, which are the starting point for all negotiations." Cairo, he said, welcomed the Bush administration’s initiative.

To complicate Zinni’s mission, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he wants to see a million extra Jews immigrate to the Jewish state in the coming years, principally from South Africa, Argentina and France. "In the coming years, I want to see a million Jews come from Argentina, France, and especially from South Africa," said the right-wing leader during an address to the press in Tel Aviv.

"The first objective of the government is to bring another million Jews soon," he added, saying the mass immigration "may take 12 to 13 years but it is central, and in my eyes is the most important goal of the government."