Israeli helicopters killed four Palestinians in an overnight raid in the Gaza Strip, just hours US peace envoy Anthony Zinni asked Israel to refrain from attacks for 48 hours to give the Palestinians a chance to crack down on hardliners, said reports.
At least three of the four were said by residents in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis to be militants from the Palestinian Popular Resistance, a broad-based militia movement, drawn mainly from the mainstream Fateh movement, according to AFP.
An Israeli army source said the military had detected "terrorists" in the area.
"An army force identified a group of terrorists which opened fire at an army outpost in the center of Gush Katif settlement bloc. Helicopter forces returned fire and identified a hit," the source said.
The army also claimed that the "rockets were not fired at buildings."
Twenty people were inured in the attacks, according to Haaretz daily.
In response, Palestinian gunners fired six mortar shells at settlements in central Gaza in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday. The mortars caused damage to vehicles and houses, but no injuries.
Israeli military sources said the gunships caught the squads in the act of shelling Israeli targets near the militant's fire base in Khan Yunis, which overlooks the Gaza settlement center of Neve Dekalim.
The sources said one of the mortar squads targeted belonged to Hamas, and that the other was part of the Abu Rish faction of Fateh.
But Chief of Palestinian Public Security Abdel-Razek al-Majaydeh denounced the IAF attack as "an ambush planned by the Israeli army."
In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers seriously wounded a Palestinian who they said threw a suspicious object onto a settlers' bypass road near Azun village. Another man with him escaped without injury, said Haaretz.
Later in the morning, The Jerusalem Post reported that the occupation army entered the town of Halhoul near Hebron, citing Palestinian sources.
The unit, entering some 300 meters into Palestinian Authority-controlled territory, “carried out operations against wanted Palestinians,” said the report.
The Palestinians said the forces did not detain any suspects.
Elsewhere, a curfew enforced two days ago on Israeli controlled areas of Hebron is still in effect, said the paper.
The curfew was imposed in the wake of a Palestinian shooting attack on a police jeep.
There were no casualties in the attack, although the vehicle sustained some damage.
The paper also reported that an Israeli kibbutz was on high alert at this hour after a hole was discovered in the security fence.
The kibbutz lies just over the Green Line separating Israel from the Palestinian territories, adjacent to the West Bank city of Qalqilya.
”Numerous Border Police forces were called in and are combing the vicinity for hidden bombs set by Palestinian infiltrators,” Army Radio said.
Israeli helicopters killed two Palestinian children, aged three and 13, on Monday in a failed assassination bid on a militant leader from the hardline group Islamic Jihad, who survived the West Bank attack with serious injuries.
US and EU officials expressed their condolences to the families, but the EU -- often accused by Israel of being soft on the Palestinians -- responded by telling Arafat to dismantle the "terrorist networks" and end the armed uprising, said AFP.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met both Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, saying Brussels still supported Arafat as a leader of his people but stressing his "obligation" to arrest “extremists” responsible for attacks on Israel.
Palestinian officials called the EU stance a green light to Sharon to step up his attacks, said the agency.
The raid came just hours after both sides agreed to a 48 period of calm when Israel would refrain from its wave of attacks while giving Palestinian police the chance to “get serious with religious extremists opposed to any ceasefire with the Jewish state,” the report added.
But US officials said Israel had reserved the right to target "ticking bomb" militants about to launch attacks, and to respond to frequent home-made mortar attacks on Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
In a statement, the Palestinian Authority deplored the "silence" of the international community over continued Israeli raids.
"Israel continues to pursue its aggression even though the Palestinians are respecting a ceasefire," the Palestinian leadership said in a statement.
"We ask ourselves if the Palestinian people will still accept seeing their children die while the international community stays silent in the face of Israeli aggression."
The four deaths bring the overall death toll from the Intifada, which began in September 2000, to 1,071 -- including 825 Palestinians and 223 Israelis, according to AFP’s tally – Albawaba.com
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