Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinian militants today on the second day of a raid in the southern Gaza Strip.
In all, 11 Palestinians have been killed and 40 wounded in the Khan Younis incursion which Israel launched yesterday to curtail a spate of mortar attacks on Jewish settlements.
The Israeli army said soldiers shot two gunmen who approached their forces, killing one.
In a second incident, militants detonated an explosive near an Israeli tank and soldiers responded with tank fire that landed near a hospital, killing a second militant and wounding three other people, medics and witnesses said.
The violence was the latest in a series of incidents that shattered a brief period of calm in the Palestinian territories after the death of President Yasser Arafat in November. Fifteen other Palestinians were wounded in Khan Younis.
Palestinians have been unable to bury any of those killed in the raid in Gaza's second largest city because Israeli forces were in control at the local cemetery, medics said.
The Israeli army said it launched the raid yesterday after militants bombarded Israeli settlements with 30 mortar bombs and rockets in the past week, killing a foreign worker and hurting 17 other people.
Israel said it also arrested 17 militant suspects in the West Bank, a territory it captured in addition to Gaza in the 1967 Middle East War.
Meanwhile militants in northern Gaza fired a Qasam rocket at the southern Israeli town of Sderot, causing no casualties but damaging a car, Israel Radio said.