JERUSALEM - Trying to right the balance in Israel's war crimes dispute with Egypt, an Israeli historian said Friday that about 200 Israeli prisoners were killed by Egyptian troops in the 1973 Middle East war.

One Israeli veteran said he saw eight captured comrades being bayoneted and shot to death by Egyptian soldiers in 1973. "I can still hear their terrible screams," said David Abudaram.

The disclosures came after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called this week for Israel to prosecute soldiers accused of killing Egyptian POWs in the 1956 and 1967 wars.

The reports of Israeli atrocities surfaced this month when a retired Israeli general admitted that in the 1956 war he shot and killed 49 Egyptian prisoners because he didn't have enough men to guard them.

Several veterans then came forward with accounts of POW killings by Israeli soldiers. Historians said that such killings were carried out in all of the Arab-Israeli wars, although the scope of the killings remained unclear.

Israeli military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki said that, based on army documents, he believed about 1,000 Egyptians were killed by Israeli soldiers in the 1967 war after they surrendered.

But after Mubarak's call for war crimes trials, Yitzhaki said Friday he wrote to the Egyptian leader describing 10 incidents in which Egyptian soldiers killed 80 Israeli captives in 1973, and saying it was best for both sides not to revive the past.

"We are now in a time of peace, let's wipe out the terrible past,"Yitzhaki quoted the letter as saying. He delivered it to Egypt's ambassador to Israel on Thursday.

Yitzhaki said that, based on Israeli army documents, about 200 Israelis were killed by Egyptians in 1973 after surrendering.

In addition, dozens of Israeli prisoners were beaten and mistreated in Egyptian captivity, he said.

Abudaram said he and about 20 comrades were ambushed by Egyptian troops in 1973 about 12 miles south of Port Said, Egypt.

"Most of us were badly hurt and so we decided to give ourselves up. We raised our arms and ran toward the Egyptians," Abudaram, 48, said in an interview.

Egyptian soldiers then herded together a group of Israeli captives.

"I saw the Egyptian soldiers stab them with bayonets and then shoot them. I saw at least eight of my comrades murdered right there in the field," Abudaram said.

The Yerushalayim weekly published transcripts Friday of taped testimony Abudaram and other veterans gave to senior officers in May 1974, shortly after their release from captivity.

Abudaram said he wanted to speak out sooner but was under army orders not to. "When we protested, we were told that those were the orders," Abudaram said.

The army had no immediate comment Friday.

Also Friday, Israeli troops, continuing their campaign against the Islamic extremist movement Hamas, killed two Palestinians holed up in a safehouse in the West Bank town of Hebron.

They were not part of the Hamas cell that carried out Monday's fatal bus bombing in Jerusalem but belonged to another unit expected to launch revenge attacks for Israel's arrest of about 30 Hamas members in the last week, Israeli officials said.

As the peace talks continued Friday, both sides reported progress on other difficult issues, including the distribution of water. The talks were suspended for a day after Monday's Hamas suicide bomber left five dead, including an American teacher, on a Jerusalem bus last Monday. Another 108 people were injured in the blast.

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