GAZA CITY, Sept 26: At least eight Palestinians, including four militants from a group that claims links to Al Qaeda, were killed on Wednesday in two separate Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip.

Two civilians and one militant belonging to the Popular Resistance Committees were killed by tank fire during a ground incursion on the outkirts of the northern town of Beit Hanun, medical sources said.

Armoured vehicles supported by helicopters carried out the operation, which an army spokeswoman said was a routine incursion aimed at locating rockets and explosive devices.

“We fired towards an anti-tank cell which was about to fire on our forces,” she said, saying the victims were standing in an open field and not near a

house, as the Palestinians claim.

Nine other people were wounded in the raid, which came shortly after four Palestinian militants belonging to a radical group which claims links to Al-Qaeda were killed by an Israeli air raid on the heart of Gaza City.

The Army of Islam militants were driving through the busy Zaitun neighbourhood when their pick-up truck was hit by an Israeli missile, witnesses and security sources said.

Four passers-by were also wounded, including one who was in critical condition, medical sources said.

A man was identified as the militant group’s spokesman and senior leader Ahmad al-Madhum, also known as Khatab al-Maqdisi.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said it had “targeted a vehicle with terror activists and rockets ready for launching in it.” Wednesday’s violence marked one of the bloodiest days since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of

the Gaza Strip in June, ousting president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah.

The Army of Islam was one of three Palestinian groups, including Hamas’s armed wing, which claimed responsibility

for the capture of an Israeli serviceman in a brazen cross-border raid in June 2006.

—AFP