Violence Flares in Gaza

Earlier, 14 Palestinians were killed and 85 wounded in clashes that took place inside the Jabalya refugee camp when occupation troops stormed it.

Israelis killed

Meanwhile, Palestinian fighters killed two Israelis along a strip of road connecting the northern Gaza Jewish settlements of Elei Sinai and Dugit, Israeli radio said.

One of those killed was a woman jogging along a road near a Jewish settlement in the northern Gaza Strip, occupation military sources said. The woman’s identity was not immediately available.

Israeli soldiers who rushed to the scene returned fire and killed at least one fighter. Earlier, two fighters from the resistance group Hamas struck an Israeli position near the Jabalya refugee camp, killing a soldier before they were shot dead.

‘Tense’ situation

Reporting from Gaza, Aljazeera’s correspondent Wail Dahduh said the situation is still very tense in view of the continuation of Israeli military operations in the towns of Jabalya and Bait Lahia in northern Gaza.

Israeli forces, backed by military vehicles and bulldozers, advanced to the boundaries of Bloc 4, east of Jabalya refugee camp. Then they started razing vast farms and demolishing parts of houses after driving out their residents, Dahduh reported.

The Israeli forces have set up a high-technology surveillance tower for snipers, who target people appearing in the streets or in the areas that the tower overlooks upon, he said.

The military operation is going on and Palestinians fighters are firing rockers and bullets at Israeli vehicles advancing, Dahduh added.

Witnesses in the camp told Aljazeera.net’s correspondent in Gaza, Laila El-Haddad, that power lines were targeted on Wednesday, leaving the entire camp – which houses some 120,000 people -without electricity.

Elsewhere, in the village of Bait Hanun, residents said they are without water and ambulances were being prevented from entering the area. One woman and her children were feared trapped inside their home after Israeli armoured bulldozers partially demolished it with them inside, according to Haddad.

Overnight raid

The Israeli army stepped up its operations overnight after two Israeli children were killed on Wednesday in a rocket attack in Sderot, near the Gaza border.

On Wednesday, soldiers killed six Palestinians in a raid. They also shot dead a Palestinian boy outside a Jewish settlement in central Gaza, Palestinian medics said.