GAZA CITY (AFP) — Four Palestinians, including at least two civilians, were killed in an Israeli incursion in Gaza on Sunday as Israel vowed more operations in the Hamas-run territory in response to rocket fire.
The Palestinian Authority slammed "Israeli escalations" amid revived peace talks and ahead of a landmark visit to the region by US President George W. Bush to bolster the relaunched negotiations.
The victims were killed during the hours-long incursion east of the Al-Bureij refugee camp, where Israeli jeeps, armoured vehicles and bulldozers backed by helicopters began operating early in the morning.
Seventeen-year-old Ziad Abu Raqba died after being shot in the chest during the incursion, medics said, adding that the teenager was not a member of any militant group.
An air strike on a house east of Al-Bureij killed Iman Hamdan, a 34-year old woman and Mahmud Abid, an 18-year-old member of Hamas's armed wing, medics said, adding that several other people were wounded in the strike.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the incident.
A fourth man, Ahmed Khalaf, 29, was killed by a tank shell as the fighting continued past sundown, with helicopters and tanks laying down a heavy barrage of fire in the area of the operation.
At least 50 Palestinians have been wounded in the fighting, medics said.
Five soldiers were wounded by an anti-tank missile fired at their vehicle during the operation targeting militants, the army said.
Sunday's operation was the latest of near daily Israeli air and ground incursions aimed at stamping out repeated rocket fire from the coastal strip, which has killed almost two dozen people, the vast majority of them militants, over the past week.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday the military would further ratchet up its action in the territory after a rocket fired by Gaza militants last week landed the farthest ever inside Israel.
"Last Thursday long-range rockets were fired and reached the town of Ashkelon," Olmert said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.
"There is no doubt that this signals a certain escalation in the activity of terror organisations in Gaza. The defence ministry has instructed the security services to strengthen Israel's reaction, which has already been firmer in recent weeks."
On Thursday, a Grad-type 122mm rocket struck without causing casualties about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the Gaza border near the coastal city of Ashkelon, the army said.
The escalation in violence in Gaza comes ahead of this week's landmark visit to the region by US President George W. Bush, who arrives on Wednesday in the first trip by a sitting US president since Bill Clinton visited in December 1998.
The visit is aimed at shoring up Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that were relaunched under Washington's stewardship in late November at an international conference in the US city of Annapolis.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat slammed the Israeli operations in the Palestinian territories ahead of Bush's visit, and said Abbas would demand that they be stopped when he meets Olmert a day before the US president arrives.
"The peace process cannot be successful unless there is a stop to settlements and Israeli escalations against the Palestinian people," he said.
Increasingly isolated Gaza -- where the Islamist Hamas movement seized control in June 2006 after routing forces loyal to secular president Mahmud Abbas -- will be watching the Bush trip from the sidelines.
Abbas has refused to hold talks with Hamas until it relinquishes control of Gaza and on Saturday the Islamists called Bush's visit unwelcome, with a spokesman saying in a statement that it was "aimed at serving the occupation."
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