AL QUDS, Feb 19: Palestinian gunmen killed at least six Israelis in an attack on Tuesday on an army checkpoint in the West Bank, Israeli security sources said.

The security sources said the Israelis were ambushed at Ein Ariq, northwest of the Palestinian-ruled city of Ramallah. In addition to the six dead, at least one other Israeli was wounded in the attack on a caravan at the checkpoint.

Earlier, sixteen people were killed as Israel launched air strikes against Palestinians on Tuesday.

An Israeli helicopter fired a missile at an office of the Hamas in the Gaza Strip’s Jabalya refugee camp, killing two Palestinians and wounding several schoolchildren.

In the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up at the entrance to the Jewish settlement of Mehola, killing himself but causing no other casualties.

Bloodshed has surged with international diplomacy largely dormant amid increased pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is under fire from both the political right and left after a sharp rise in the number of Israeli deaths.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas political leader in Gaza, vowed revenge for the Israeli missile strike on his group’s office.

“The answer for the killing of children and civilians can never be silence,” he said. “The new crime will never deter us from continuing to fight the enemy until we drive it out of our homeland.” The missile hit between shifts at a nearby school in Jabalya, meaning that many pupils were entering or leaving.

Women wept as they frantically searched for missing children. “God, please save my child. I have no other child,” one woman wailed.

Inside Jabalya hospital, surgeons operated on nine-year-old Inas Salah, her body drenched in blood and riddled with shrapnel. “She will be lucky to survive,” one doctor said.

Hospital sources in the town of Khan Younis said a 14-year-old girl, a 37-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man were killed when tank shells smashed their homes on Monday night.

Israeli troops also shot dead two Palestinians near Jewish settlements in Gaza, and killed another two during a gunfight early on Tuesday near Nablus, in the West Bank.—Agencies