GAZA CITY, March 3: Eight Palestinians, including a nine-month pregnant woman and a child, were killed on Monday and some 35 wounded as Israeli armour staged a new large-scale raid into the Gaza Strip, while troops also shot and killed a Palestinian in the West Bank.

The frequent army raids in the Gaza Strip are aimed at smashing militant groups’ infrastructure, but the hardline Hamas fired a fresh salvo of its home-made Qassam rockets on the Israeli town of Sderot hours later, causing no injuries.

Around 40 Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers accompanying infantry units moved into the El Bureij refugee camp south of Gaza City, meeting with stiff resistance, sources said.

The soldiers blew up four houses after telling the residents to leave but the pregnant woman remained inside and was killed by falling rubble, medical sources said.

She was identified as Nuher Sweidan al-Maqadma, 33, and was nine-month pregnant, doctors in the hospital in the nearby town of Deir el-Balah said.

“We were expecting the baby tonight,” Shukri al-Maqadma, 40, told AFP from hospital, where nine of his ten children are also recovering.

“The ambulances could not reach us because of shelling, as well as firing from tanks and helicopters, that went on for six hours,” he said.

At the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, Dr Ahmed Rabah said: “We could have saved the woman, or at least her baby, but she had already bled for too long.”

Tareq Akel, 13, was among those shot dead by Israeli troops in shootout with Palestinian militants. The six others killed were aged between 17 and 24.

Thirty-five other Palestinians were wounded, with eight in critical condition, security sources said.

Two Israeli soldiers were slightly injured by Palestinians lobbing grenades at them, the army said.

On Monday afternoon, 23-year-old Mohammed Issa bled to death after being shot dead by Israeli troops on the road between the West Bank towns of Nablus and Ramallah, Palestinian security and medical sources said.—AFP