BEIT LAHIYA, Jan 4: Israeli troops killed eight Palestinians as they intensified a campaign against rocket attacks on Tuesday, prompting a furious denunciation of the "Zionist enemy" by presidential election favourite Mahmud Abbas.

An 11-year-old boy and five teenagers were among seven people killed when troops fired tank shells at a farmhouse in the Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza from where Palestinian militants have frequently fired mortars and rockets into southern Israel, witnesses and security sources said.

Body parts could be seen lodged in the wreckage of greenhouses and nearby strawberry patches. "I saw some masked people setting up the rocket stand and firing, and then a tank came out of Nissanit (a nearby Jewish settlement) and began shelling," said local resident Rida Abu Banat.

"I saw body parts flying everywhere - hands, legs, heads. I went down immediately to try and help the injured people before the ambulances came. The ground was soaked in blood."

The tanks opened fire shortly after a number of mortar rounds were fired towards the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel, wounding one Israeli. "Four mortars were fired, three against the Erez industrial zone, one near a school bus," said army spokesman Captain Yishai David.

"We will not tolerate of this kind of shooting against civilians. No country in the world would tolerate this kind of activity." Sources at the Kamal Edwane hospital, where most of the dead and wounded were evacuated, said one of the victims was an 11-year-old, three were aged 16 and two 17. The identity of the seventh was not clear.

Capt David insisted that the shelling had targeted the militants who fired mortar rounds on the Erez crossing. Separately, a 24-year-old Palestinian was killed and five wounded when they were caught in a shootout between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen east of Gaza City, medical sources said. -AFP