World must "deal harshly" with Hamas - Bush

US President George W. Bush yesterday said the world must "deal harshly" with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and a leading Republican senator said US troops may have to go after them.

"The free world and those who love freedom and peace must deal harshly with Hamas and the killers," Bush told reporters when asked whether Israel was justified in recent attacks against the group.

"That's just the way it is in the Middle East," he said as he left Sunday services at First Congregational Church in Kennebunkport.

The remarks were his most extensive on the situation in the Middle East since a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence last week threw his peace "road map" into turmoil, and they intensified earlier calls for action against Hamas.

Hamas has defied the Palestinian Authority and rejected the road map as too generous to Israel. It claimed responsibility for the most lethal incident in the current outbreak, a suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Wednesday which killed 17.

The Bush administration had criticised Israel for trying to assassinate a Hamas leader on Tuesday, but trained its sights on Hamas in the wake of the Jerusalem bombing and complaints from pro-Israel groups in the US.

Bush said the US was helping the Palestinian Authority reconstitute a security force to take on Hamas, but declined to say if Washington would provide arms or money.