Israeli troops kill four Palestinian gunmen [video report]

GAZA - Israel killed four Palestinians and wounded 12 in Gaza on Thursday as part of an offensive to free a captured soldier and stop rocket attacks on the Jewish state, witnesses and medics said.

An air strike killed one militant as he was preparing to launch an anti-tank rocket at Israeli troops in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, an army spokesman said.

Troops who have been operating in the camp since Wednesday earlier shot dead another two gunmen. A third was later killed in an air strike that wounded four civilians including a child and an ambulance driver standing nearby in the camp.

Israeli naval boats also kept up the pressure, shelling a key coastal road used by emergency vehicles and others. One ambulance was damaged in the barrage, medics said.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive last month after Palestinian militants abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid.

Israel has killed at least 110 Palestinians, around half of them militants, during the operation. On Wednesday alone, troops killed 15 Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. A civilian hurt in those incidents died in hospital on Thursday.

One of the militant groups involved in the raid to seize Shalit said defiantly that the Israeli campaign was a failure.

"The soldier is still missing ... And the rockets are continuing to strike. They (Israel) will pay a dear price for killing our civilians and fighters," said Abu Mujahed, a Popular Resistance Committees spokesman.

- REUTERS