(Adds comments by Hamas, Islamic Jihad officials)

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA, March 6 (Reuters) - Egypt began talks with Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Thursday on a truce between the Palestinian militant movements and Israel, officials in the groups said.

Gaza leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, groups that have been firing rockets into southern Israel, met Egyptian officials in El Arish, an Egyptian town just south of the Gaza Strip.

The talks got under way three days after Israel ended a five-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 120 Palestinians. Medical workers said about half of the dead were civilians.

Hamas officials said one of the group's senior leaders, Mahmoud al-Zahar, was heading its delegation in El Arish.

Khader Habib, an Islamic Jihad leader, said the group sent a team to the Egyptian city for "talks about calm".

"The conditions are clear, the Zionist enemy must end all forms of aggression against our people in Gaza and the West Bank and lift the siege on Gaza," Habib told Reuters.

Hamas has stopped short of saying any truce must include the West Bank.

In a possible sign of movement towards a cessation of hostilities, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Wednesday that Israel would have no need to carry out attacks in Gaza if militants there stopped firing rockets across the border.

Militant groups have called the salvoes a response to Israeli raids in the Gaza Strip and in the occupied West Bank.

Israel tightened restrictions at Gaza's frontier crossings after Hamas seized the territory from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction in fighting in June.

Abbas, who suspended U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel in protest at the recent Gaza offensive, said on Wednesday they would not resume until a ceasefire was reached.

But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who met Abbas during a two-day visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank earlier this week, said the Palestinian leader had dropped any conditions for returning to the statehood negotiations. (Writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Editing by Adam Entous)

AlertNet news is provided by