(AFP) – Dec 11, 2007

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Six Palestinian fighters were killed in Israel's largest operation for months against the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the eve of the first Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations since a US summit.

Dual-pronged raids, backed by warplanes in the north and south of the Hamas-run territory, which encountered stiff resistance from Palestinian militants, wounded 15 Palestinians, medical officials said.

Five militants were killed in southern Gaza where around 30 Israeli tanks pushed three kilometres (two miles) into the sector, which local residents said was the deepest Israeli incursion since Hamas seized power six months ago.

An Israeli tank shell killed three members of Islamic Jihad -- Mohammed Abu Hamra, Ibrahim Barud and Jihad al-Aswad, all in their 20s, the group said.

An Israeli air strike killed Omar Khalil, 23, from the armed Popular Resistance Committees in the south near Rafah, a town that straddles the Gaza-Egypt border.

Hamas militant Mahmud Abu Mustafa died in hospital following an Israeli air raid in the same area, while an Islamic Jihad fighter was killed in another such attack near Gaza's northern town of Beit Hanun, Palestinian medics said.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed two air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning before operations in the area concluded.

"There was one air attack in southern Gaza Strip this morning. A squad of armed gunmen approached the forces there," the spokesman told AFP.

Four Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their tank, an army spokeswoman said.

Another spokeswoman said later that the incursion had ended in the evening.

Israeli troops cut traffic on the main road dissecting Gaza from north to south and encountered fierce resistance from Palestinian fighters, the medics and witnesses said.

Dozens of suspected militants were detained by Israeli soldiers as they conducted house-to-house searches in the area, witnesses said.

Palestinian officials said the incursion into Gaza was Israel's largest in months in terms of the number of Israeli troops and materiel involved and the distance penetrated into the impoverished territory.

"The operation, in terms of the purpose is very much in the same framework as in the last half of the year -- limited incursions to prevent Qassam (rocket) and mortar firings and infiltration attempts," an army spokesman said.

"There were a number of tanks today that have been involved in the operation. If you look at other operations, there aren't always tanks that are involved. But the use of the tanks today is not out of the ordinary," he said.

Israel has conducted regular air raids and limited ground incursions in Gaza since mid-June, when the Islamist Hamas seized power after routing forces loyal to moderate president Mahmud Abbas.

The operations have failed to curb fire from militants, with mortar shells or rockets fired into Israel on a daily basis, mostly causing no casualties.

Hamas, which does not recognise Israel's right to exist, fiercely opposes negotiations which Abbas formally revived along with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at a peace conference in the US city of Annapolis in late November.

The steering committee that is to oversee the renewed negotiations will meet for the first time on Wednesday in Jerusalem, amid uproar over Israel's plans to expand a settlement in the east of the holy city.

A spokesman for the dismissed Hamas government slammed Tuesday's operation and urged the Palestinian Authority to call off Wednesday's peace talks.

"Faced with this atrocious crime the government calls the Palestinian negotiators not to go to tomorrow's meetings with the aggressors and to cut all contact with them," said Taher al-Nunu.

"It will be shameful to shake hands stained with blood."

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina slammed the raids as an "abominable crime" and said they "reinforce doubts about Israel's desire to assure the success of the negotiations that start tomorrow."

Tuesday's deaths brought to 5,974 the number of people killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence since 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

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