Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man outside a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip this morning as the army responded to suicide attacks which killed 22 people on Sunday.
Witnesses and medical officials said the 30-year-old, from Khan Younis, central Gaza, was shot in the head as he watched soldiers at the garrison at the nearby Neve Dekalim settlement.
It is not immediately clear if he was affiliated to Palestinian militant groups and the Israeli army had not commented at the time of writing.
As part of the clamp down, Israel also imposed new travel bans on the West Bank and Gaza, despite pressure from Britain and the United States to reverse its decision to bar Palestinians from attending peace talks in London.
Israel applied the restrictions after the Palestinian double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed 22 people, the worst such attack in the Jewish state in nine months.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's response to the attack was seen as a deliberate effort to look tough to Israeli voters, who have turned sharply to the right amid a wave of Palestinian bombings and are widely expected to re-elect him.
The diplomatic row and new Israeli-Palestinian violence overshadowed the build-up to Israel's January 28th general election as parties kicked off campaign broadcasts.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed on with plans to host the January 14th talks with Palestinians on peace and reforms despite Israel confining the officials to Palestinian areas.
In a speech to a gathering of British ambassadors, Mr Blair said commitment to an elusive Middle East peace was essential to winning support for a US-led drive to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"The reason there is opposition over our stance on Iraq has less to do with any love of Saddam, but over a sense of double standards. The Middle East peace process remains essential to any understanding with the Muslim and Arab world," he said.
Mr Blair has invited the Palestinians for talks with a 'quartet' of Middle East mediators - the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia - to discuss sweeping changes demanded by Washington as a condition for statehood. The United States has backed Britain's call for the meeting to go ahead.
But Israeli ambassador to London Zvi Shtauber told BBC radio there was no point in talks while Mr Yasser Arafat remained Palestinian leader.
"It is not constructive that Yasser Arafat should nominate the people who should deal with reforms in the government of Yasser Arafat," he said.