US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas on Thursday, urging him to rein in militants after a suicide bombing killed five people in Israel.

"She encouraged the Palestinian Authority, President Abbas, to act to stop terror attacks as well as ... to start dismantling those terrorist networks that are responsible for these acts of terror," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

McCormack declined to say if Rice was equally forceful in taking the Israelis to task for the killings of militant Islamic leaders which the Palestinian radicals say have triggered retaliatory attacks.

"She hasn't had those conversations yet. I anticipate that she will," McCormack said.

Rice's telephone call to Abbas came as Middle East peace talks stalled six weeks after Israel's landmark pullout from Gaza.

A suicide bomb blast ripped through an open-air market in the Israeli coastal city of Hadera on Wednesday afternoon, killing at least five people and wounding dozens.

Source: Xinhua