GAZA CITY, Aug 14: Two Palestinian civilians and four militants were killed in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday as the Israeli army carried out its latest incursion into the territory controlled by Hamas, sources said.

In an operation that began early on Tuesday and was continuing more than 12 hours later, Israeli tanks backed by helicopters rolled into Gaza near the southern town of Khan Yunis, witnesses and the army said.

The troops were operating “against terror threats in the area, including tunnels and rockets” and engaged in gunfights with militants on the ground, said an army spokesman.

A Hamas gunman, 24-year-old Mohammed Abu Musameh, was killed in an early morning airstrike. Later another Hamas militant, Omar al-Qarrah, was killed along with his mother, Sabha, when their house was fired on, medics said.

Another civilian, 40-year-old Ibrahim al-Shami, was also killed as a result of the fighting, they said. Early in the evening, medics recovered the bodies of two other militants, Hamas’s Ahmed al-Qawa, 25, and Mussab Abu Jiama, 27, whose affiliation was not immediately clear, medics and Hamas said. The two were killed in strikes earlier in the day, they said.—AFP