SDEROT, Sept 29: Palestinian militants eluding an army crackdown killed two Israeli children in a rocket attack from Gaza on Wednesday and Israeli troops killed six Palestinians in raids in the coastal strip and the West Bank.

Two makeshift Qassam rockets hit a residential block in Sderot, close to Israel's fenced border with Gaza, critically wounding two children who were declared dead on arrival at a regional hospital. Thirteen other residents were injured.

An Israeli helicopter fired two missiles at a target in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp. At least two Palestinians were wounded. sraeli forces who stormed into Gaza shot dead a Hamas man earlier on Wednesday as well as youths of 17 and 14 in a stone-throwing crowd inside Jabalya.

Thirty Palestinians, including stone throwers in school uniforms and armed militants, were wounded, some critically. Gun battles drawing in Israeli helicopters intensified in the afternoon in one part of the cinder-block slum, witnesses said.

In a separate incident, Israeli troops shot dead a boy of 13 and wounded four others in a crowd pelting stones at an army post outside a Jewish settlement in central Gaza.

A Palestinian was killed in an army raid into Nablus. In Jenin, a militant died when a taxi he was in overturned while trying to elude pursuing Israeli soldiers. A comrade was shot dead as he fled on foot.

Violence spiralled on the heels of the fourth anniversary of the intifada. Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei urged his people and Israel on Tuesday to reconsider tactics that have locked the two sides in a cycle of bloodshed. -Reuters