With the Hamas-led government halting work in protest at the violence, two bodyguards of Hamas deputy prime minister Nassereddin al-Shaer were shot in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, security and medical sources said.

Shaer, who was detained for weeks as part of an Israeli clampdown on the Islamist Hamas and was released only last week, was not in the car but one of his guards was seriously wounded.

Earlier, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades linked to president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah was wounded by Hamas gunfire in Nablus, the sources said.

After the Hamas-led government saw its headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah stormed by Abbas loyalists on Sunday, it announced that work was being halted in all government ministries.

The government "has announced the suspension of work in government institutions because of the attacks against the seat of government in the West Bank and attempts to kidnap officials," spokesman Ghazi Hamad said.

Prisons minister Wasfi Qabha had overnight denied reports that he had been the target of a kidnap attempt by militants loyal to Abbas.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades called a general strike in protest at Sunday's clashes and it was widely observed in Ramallah, where all the shops in the city centre were closed.

The fresh unrest came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew into the Middle East and pro-Western Arab governments warned any hope she might revive the moribund peace process was vain without an end to the violence.

In Gaza, the Islamist-led government withdrew interior ministry troops that had engaged in deadly clashes with security forces loyal to the moderate Abbas on Sunday in which eight people were killed and some 130 wounded Sunday.

The internecine feuding was the deadliest since Hamas took power in March after its upset parliamentary election defeat of Abbas's Fatah movement and cast a cloud over efforts by the two factions to form a national unity government acceptable to Western donors.

The West's refusal to channel aid through the Hamas-led government until the Islamists renounce violence and recognise Israel has left it unable to pay the wages of its employees.

A month-long protest strike by civil servants was joined by some security force personnel loyal to Abbas Saturday triggering the following day's violence when the interior ministry deployed its own personnel in their place.

Hamas charges that the strike is being manipulated by Fatah to force it to make concessions in the national unity government talks, a charge vigorously denied by the president's loyalists.

Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab states to have signed peace treaties with Israel, called for an immediate halt to the feuding and the swift formation of the promised unity administration.

The so-called quartet of major powers that sponsors the Middle East peace process has warned that there can be no end to the political and financial boycott until the new government is formed.

In talks with King Abdullah II of Jordan late Sunday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he believed the violence on the eve of Rice's tour was "blocking the peace process," his spokesman Suleiman Awwad told reporters.

"How can we ask the international community and the great powers to take action to relaunch the peace process when they (the Palestinians) are utterly divided," Awwad quoted the president as saying.

Rice is due to meet the two leaders on her tour, as well as representatives of the six pro-Western Gulf states, who also issued an urgent call for calm late Sunday.