The European Union will add three Palestinian militant groups, including a military arm of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, to a list of banned terrorist groups next week, EU sources said today.
They said the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed Fatah youth group that has claimed responsibility for several suicide bombings, would join the list of organisations whose assets must be frozen in all 15 EU member states.
EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, will also add the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for killing Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi last year, and the smaller Palestine Liberation Front, the sources said.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the military wing of the radical Islamic movement Hamas are already on the list, created last December in the wake of the September 11th attacks on the United States.