BEIT HANUN, June 29: Israeli troops will remain in the northern Gaza Strip for "as long as necessary", Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz warned on Tuesday , just hours after the army kicked off a major operation to halt the firing of Palestinian rockets from the area.

"The solution is, first of all, to take control of the areas from which (the rockets) are fired and we will complete that during the day," Mofaz told Israeli public television. "We will stay there as long as necessary."

Early on Tuesday, Israeli forces moved into the northern town of Beit Hanun in a bid to stop the firing of rockets at Israeli targets, which on Monday killed two Israelis in the southern town of Sderot.

"We will also continue to act against the (rocket) manufacturing infrastructure, including those who prepare and activate them, as well as those who send such people," Mofaz warned.

Meanwhile, in southern Gaza, 14-year-old Ahmad Abu Eid was shot dead by troops in Khan Yunis while standing on the roof of his house feeding the pigeons, Palestinian sources said.

Israeli military sources said troops had fired at a suspicious figure on the roof of an abandoned building "used by terrorists to shoot at army positions and at settlements." The boy's death brings the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, to 4,136, including 3,141 Palestinians and 923 Israelis, according to a count.

As troops moved into Beit Hanun's industrial zone, at least 15 Palestinians, most of them teenage stone throwers, were injured in clashes with the army, medical sources said.

Witnesses said an activist from the Hamas had been killed while attempting to detonate a bomb, but there was no official confirmation as the body had yet to be recovered by medics.

Several hours earlier, the Israeli airforce bombed two targets in Gaza, the first of which hit a building housing several foreign and local media organisations, one of which has links to Hamas.

The second strike hit a metal workshop in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, sources on both sides said. The army's early-morning activity came just hours after two Israelis in Sderot were killed by a Qassam rocket.

However, despite the incursion in northern Gaza, Palestinian militants still managed to fire two more salvos of rockets at the town on Tuesday, lightly injuring one man. The Gaza City raid, which left three injured, was fiercely denounced by the Tel Aviv-based Foreign Press Association, which slammed it as demonstrating a "callous disregard" for the lives of journalists.

Two Palestinian technicians were among the injured when five rockets slammed into the 12-storey building which houses news organisations such as the BBC, CNN, NBC and Al-Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Israeli security forces announced they had detained three Palestinians who were planning to kidnap and murder an Israeli businessman. According to a statement by the Shin Beth internal security service, the three, who were arrested on June 22, were planning to entice an Israeli businessman to the West Bank and kill him, then use his body as a bargaining chip.

At the same time, Israeli security sources said the body of an Israeli man was recovered from a village near the West Bank town of Ramallah. The 63-year-old man, who was killed by a shot to the chest, was reportedly a merchant from southern Israel who frequently travelled to Beit Rima village on business.

Although police and military sources would not confirm whether the background was criminal or political, the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for the killing in a phone call to AFP. The group said the man had been killed in revenge for the army's recent killing of its top commander in the West Bank. -AFP