Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, acted without Norwegian help in a botched 1973 assassination in the ski resort of Lillehammer, a national commission concluded yesterday.

Norwegians have long speculated about involvement by their own police or intelligence service in the killing, which has been shrouded in secrecy for 27 years, and which has been a sore point in otherwise warm relations between Norway and Israel.

On July 21 1973, a team of Israeli hitmen shot dead a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchikhi, as he walked home from the cinema with his pregnant wife in the resort, 110 miles north of Oslo.

The assassins apparently mistook Bouchikhi for Hassan Salameh, a PLO intelligence chief suspected of masterminding the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

"This was much more than a murder," said Gullow Gjeseth, head of the six-member government commission. "This was a violation of Norwegian sovereignty. It is a completely special case."

The commission's 179-page report said that its two-year investigation, which included reviews of previously classified material and interviews, found no evidence of Norwegian involvement.

"Even the court sentence - the sentence itself - was classified as secret until this commission got it declassified," said Mr Gjeseth, a retired Norwegian general. "A lot of the speculation came about because of this secrecy."

Mr Gjeseth said Israel would say nothing except "there was no Norwegian involvement. Period".

In January 1996, Israel paid undisclosed compensation to Bouchikhi's family but did not admit responsibility for the killing.

"No one pays out compensation unless they are guilty," Torill Larsen Bouchiki, widow of the murdered waiter, said yesterday.

Five suspected agents - Marianne Gladinkoff, who was born in Sweden; Sylvia Rafael, of South Africa; Israeli Abraham Gehmer; Dan Aerbel, who was born in Denmark; and Brazilian-born Zvi Steinberg - were convicted and jailed in Norway for the killing shortly after it took place. They were later pardoned.

According to the report, about nine others escaped from Norway, including the suspected leader, Michael Harari, a senior Mossad agent who has now retired. The commission said Norway did little to catch the suspects in the early 1970s.

"Norwegian authorities were clearly under pressure. The Israeli side presented wishes that links to other countries not be followed up," said the report.

Norway reopened the case in 1990. In 1998, it issued a global warrant for Mr Harari but closed the case the next year saying it would be impossible to get a conviction. AP