GAZA, March 7: Israeli tanks and troops seized a chunk of the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, effectively carving out a security zone in what the army called an open-ended campaign to thwart Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.

In a fresh flareup of violence, soldiers killed three Palestinians who fired on a convoy of Jewish settlers in the central Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

The creation of what Israeli Army Radio dubbed a security zone came on the heels of a raid on a Gaza refugee camp on Thursday in which 11 Palestinians were killed.

Recent Israeli operations in Gaza have drawn international criticism over civilian casualties and fuelled Palestinian fears that Israel’s new rightist government will reoccupy all of the Strip while the world’s attention is on Iraq.

Early on Friday, at least a dozen Israeli tanks and other armoured vehicles backed by helicopter gunships pushed two kilometres deeper into the fenced-in Strip from the northern Erez border crossing, Palestinian security sources said.

The force rolled to the edge of Jabalya refugee camp, where Thursday’s fighting took place, and the town of Beit Hanoun, establishing an armoured triangle of observation posts and roadblocks that put some 10,000 Palestinians under Israeli guns.

“We will remain for as long as is necessary... and if we decide to hold on to this territory for a long time, we will,” Colonel Yoel Strick, commander of Israel’s northern Gaza brigade, told Army Radio.

Palestinian minister Saeb Erekat condemned the move. “The incursions cannot continue if we want to give the prime minister the chance to succeed,” he said.

ROCKET ATTACKS: The Israeli army said in a statement the new Gaza deployment “was part of an attempt to... prevent the launching of Qassam rockets towards Israeli communities near the northern Gaza Strip”.