GAZA - A Palestinian activist and his two young children were killed when their house in the southern Gaza Strip was hit in fighting with Israel and each side blamed the other for the deaths yesterday.
On a day of mounting violence, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man, Saleh Zeidan, aged 33, during clashes near the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian security and hospital sources said.
The Israeli Army had no immediate comment on the death.
In Gaza, Palestinian security officials said two Israeli missiles slammed into Samir Abu Zeid's home in Rafah near the Egyptian border, killing him, his 7-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son in what the officials said was Israel's fourth military strike on the strip in less than 36 hours.
But the Army denied the charges, saying Palestinian fighters had fired a mortar bomb at an Israeli Army outpost in the area during an exchange of fire, but had missed its target and hit the nearby house.
An official from the Palestinian Popular Resistance Movement (PRM) identified Abu Zeid as a senior activist in the PRM, a group of former members of Palestinian factions, and branded the explosion an Israeli assassination.
"We hold Israel fully responsible for the sinful assassination of our comrade. Israel will pay a heavy price for the crime," the official said.
A doctor at the hospital in Rafah where the three bodies were taken said they had been torn to pieces and badly burned. At least two people were wounded in the attack.
More than a dozen Palestinian witnesses said they saw a missile launched from Israeli territory.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops in armoured vehicles clashed with Palestinian gunmen and penetrated the Palestinian-ruled town of Hebron in the West Bank, a Palestinian security official said.
An Israeli Army spokeswoman said troops had not entered Palestinian territory. She said the confrontation erupted when Palestinian fighters opened fire on an Israeli outpost near the Jewish settlement of Beit Haggai in the divided town.
The Palestinian security official said an Israeli tank and an armoured personnel carrier thrust some 700m into a Palestinian area to shell a house and a petrol station while Palestinian gunmen responded to the soldiers' rifle fire.
Palestinian hospital sources said three people were wounded.
A Reuters reporter on the scene said a Palestinian checkpoint was dismantled by the soldiers and a nearby home set alight by Israeli flares before the troops withdrew.
The bloodshed overshadowed a push by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for talks on implementing a United States-brokered truce. Peres said officials were "conducting conversations" with Palestinians on the truce, but Palestinian officials dismissed the remarks as a publicity stunt.
- REUTERS
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Father, two children killed in Gaza battle
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