The Israeli Air Force struck at a Palestinian car driving through the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Thursday afternoon, killing two militants belonging to a militant offshoot of the mainstream Fatah faction.
Earlier, Israeli soldiers had shot dead a local Islamic Jihad leader near Tulkarem in the West Bank, while two other militants were killed while trying to attack an Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military officials confirmed the two Rafah militants died in an air-force-targeted killing, but would not specify whether it used helicopter gunships or other means.
Palestinian hospital officials said a remote pilotless vehicle had flown over the area at the time of the explosion, but added it was also possible that Apache helicopters had fired a missile from a distance.
The two militants were identified as Omer Abu Setta, commander of the Ahmed Abu Reesh Brigades — a radical armed wing of the Fatah movement — and Zaki Abu Zarqa, his assistant.
The military officials said Abu Setta was responsible for the deaths of several Israeli soldiers and civilians, among them his employer, in 1993.
Ali Musa, chief of emergency at the local hospital, said the blast on Thursday afternoon had torn the bodies to shreds and the car had been still smouldering when the ambulances reached it.
Earlier in the Gaza Strip, two militants — members of the militant Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Brigades movements — were killed near the southern settlement of Netzer Hazani.
Palestinian security sources and a joint leaflet by the Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Brigades movements said the two were killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers guarding the settlement.
But Israeli military sources denied that the Israeli army had any connection with the incident. They said the two were killed by their own bomb, which apparently exploded prematurely as they approached the settlement.
In the northern West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli soldiers shot dead an armed Palestinian during a gunfight in a village north of Tulkarem.
Reports said an army unit was arresting wanted militants in the area when it came under fire. The troops returned fire and killed one of the gunmen.
Palestinian sources confirmed that the fatality was the local head of the Islamic Jihad.
Also on Thursday, Israeli army bulldozers demolished 14 Palestinian houses near Rafah, close to the border with Egypt.
Palestinian security sources said the bulldozers, backed by a column of tanks, left their positions on the borderline and drove into Rafah’s al-Barahma neighbourhood in the early morning.
Israeli soldiers called over megaphones on any inhabitants to evacuate, residents said. About 100 people, who were not allowed enough time to move out their furniture, were made homeless, they added.
Israeli military sources confirmed that the force demolished a number of structures, but insisted they were abandoned buildings.
They said that local militants used the empty constructions to aim machine-gun and mortar fire, launch anti-tank missiles and activate remote-controlled bombs at Israeli troops patrolling the border with Egypt and at nearby Israeli army outposts.
And militants fired two Qassam rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot on Thursday morning. The town lies just outside the Gaza Strip.
Nine people were treated for shock as one of the rockets landed in a residential neighbourhood, causing slight damage to several houses, and the other fell in a dirt road near the town’s public library. — Sapa-DPA