Hamas announced Tuesday it was freezing discussions on prisoner swaps with Israel.
"The atmosphere is unsuitable for talks right now," Hamas' spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Ayman Taha, said. He did not provide details.
Israel has been pushing for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israel Defense Forces soldier seized in June 2006 by Palestinian militants while on patrol near the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has ruled since the summer of 2007.
Saudi newspaper Okaz cited a Hamas source as saying the freeze was down to the death of Mahmoud al Mabhouh, a leader of a Hamas paramilitary wing, who was recently killed in Dubai. Hamas accuses Israel of murdering him.
But another Hamas leader did not directly link al Mabhouh's death with the Shalit's release talks.
"The talks were deadlocked and frozen even before al Mabhouh's murder," a Hamas leader in Gaza, Salah al Bardawil, told the Safa news agency.
In late 2009, media reports said a swap deal, which stipulated the release of some 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons in exchange for Shalit, could be approved in the near future.
The Gaza Strip has been the subject of an almost continuous Israeli blockade since Hamas took control of the enclave. The release of Shalit is a major precondition for the lifting of the blockade.
GAZA, February 2 (RIA Novosti)
