About 30 Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles pushed into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Tuesday, sparking clashes with Palestinians that killed five militants, medics and militant groups said.
Residents said the raid, a day before Israel and Palestinians are due to hold their first talks since relaunching a US-backed peace push, was the largest in their area since Israel pulled troops and settlers out of the territory in 2005.
Four Islamic Jihad gunmen were killed in clashes with Israeli ground forces and an air strike killed a local commander from the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of militant groups, medics and residents said. Fifteen Palestinians, many of them gunmen, were also wounded in the incursion, which a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described as a "heinous crime" that undermined the peace process.
An Israeli army spokeswoman played down the significance of the incursion near the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, saying about 10 tanks and armoured vehicles entered the territory as part of a routine operation against Palestinian militants. She said two Israeli soldiers were slightly injured.
The Israeli military often attacks militants in the coastal territory to try to stop them firing rockets and mortar bombs into southern Israel and has intensified the raids since last month's Annapolis peace conference.
On Wednesday, negotiators are due to hold their first formal talks since Annapolis, where Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to try to reach a deal on Palestinian statehood by the end of 2008. Many observers say that time scale is too ambitious, given major differences on key issues and Hamas's control of Gaza.
Earlier, an Israeli air strike killed a militant who was trying to launch rockets from the northern Gaza Strip and another died while handling a bomb in the occupied West Bank.
Hamas on Tuesday denied a report in the pan-Arab al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper saying exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal had expressed willingness to hand back control of the Gaza Strip to Abbas. The group has called for dialogue with Fatah but rejects Abbas's demand that it first give up Gaza.
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