Three Palestinians and an Israeli were shot dead in separate incidents of an upsurge of violence in Gaza and the West Bank on Wednesday, military sources and witnesses said. Two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli raid on a southern Gaza Strip refugee camp. A third Palestinian was shot trying to scale a border fence out of Gaza and an Israeli man was killed by a gunman in the West Bank.
Violence has increased following a brief lull after Yasser Arafat's death last month raised new hopes for peace in the Middle East.
Two Palestinian gunmen were killed in exchanges of fire during an Israeli raid on the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Khan Younis, where the army said it was trying to stop mortar attacks on nearby Jewish settlements.
Dozens of Palestinian families fled their homes before armoured bulldozers arrived. The raid into Khan Younis followed one last week in which 11 Palestinians were killed.
The army said it aimed to destroy mortar launch sites. "I cannot estimate how much longer we will have to stay there but we are doing our utmost not to harm the civilians in the area," Colonel Yoav Mordechai told Reuters.
Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who tried to scale the border fence out of the northern Gaza Strip.
A suspected Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli man west of the city of al-Khalil, military sources said.
He was shot at a point where a controversial barrier Israel is building lies close to the "Green Line" boundary that separated the West Bank from Israel before it was captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
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