GAZA CITY, Sept 13: The Israeli army kept up the pressure on the Palestinians, shooting dead one and wounding six others in a fresh Gaza Strip raid on Friday, while arresting dozens in the Palestinian territories.

In a separate incident, three brothers, including a member of the hardline Islamic Jihad movement, died and eight other Palestinians were hurt in an explosion that rocked Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, Palestinian security officials said.

The blast came from a house belonging to an official of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement, Iyad esh-Sharif, who was seriously wounded, they said, adding the cause was still unclear.

Sobhi Zeynou, 26, was killed when Israeli tanks fired shells in Rafah, at the far southern end of the Strip, in the latest in a string of incursions into the territory.

Six others were wounded, three of them seriously, by automatic weapons fire, Palestinian medical sources said.

A column of 25 Israeli tanks entered the town before dawn, a Palestinian security source said.

The tanks were backed up by two assault helicopters, which fired machineguns, and accompanied by two bulldozers which razed at least one house and a metal workshop.

The Israeli army said it arrested a dozen Palestinians, four of them on its wanted list. Troops also destroyed six metals workshops used to manufacture makeshift weapons.

Earlier, military sources said an explosive charge went off as an Israeli convoy passed near Netzarim settlement in the northern Gaza Strip, while two makeshift rockets hit an Israeli village in the Negev desert. Neither incident caused any casualties.

Israel has stepped up large-scale raids into Gaza, mirroring similar operations in the West Bank while stopping short of the massive invasion which has brought almost the whole of the latter territory under their control.

A senior Palestinian official called on the so-called Quartet of top Middle East peace players, which is to meet on Tuesday in New York, to “put a halt to the Israeli aggression”.

“We call on the Quartet (United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia) to put a halt to the Israeli aggression and secure implementation of (UN) Security Council calls for an immediate Israeli withdrawal to allow the relaunch of negotiations,” Arafat’s adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

In another clash, Israeli troops exchanged fire with Palestinians outside a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, wounding one militant, a Palestinian source said. An anonymous caller from Islamic Jihad said its militants carried out the attack on Kfar Darom.

In the West Bank, 16 wanted Palestinians allied to the Hamas and to Arafat’s Fatah were arrested during an overnight operation in the northern town of Tubas, an Israeli army spokesman said. They were arrested in their homes in the village, he said.

Palestinian security sources said only three of those arrested were wanted by Israel, one of whom belonged to Hamas, another to Islamic Jihad and another to Al-Aqsa Martrys Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli troops arrested two men, one of whom was a Fatah leader, near the town of Al Khalil. But the army said it only arrested only the wanted Fatah leader.

Three more Palestinians were rounded up elsewhere in the West Bank during military operations, the army said.

Witnesses and the army said a Palestinian teenager was shot and lightly wounded near the town of Nablus as Israeli soldiers fired warning shots at stone-throwers.

MUBARAK PRAISES BUSH: On the political front, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak paid tribute to US President George Bush’s renewed commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state.