Israeli forces killed a Palestinian woman who shot at a police base in southern Israel on Saturday, and two militants in a separate incident in the Gaza Strip, medics and Israeli security official said. In a rare incident, the woman opened fire at a guardpost at the Israeli base, and was gunned down by police there, the Israeli official said. There were no Israeli casualties.
The woman had been armed with a pistol and a bomb that police were defusing, the official added. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the incident nor was it clear whether the woman was an Israeli Arab citizen, most of whom are of Palestinian origin, or a Palestinian from occupied territory who had infiltrated the frontier.
Israeli forces shut the area to traffic and launched searches for further suspects. Palestinian medics said they recovered the bodies of two gunmen killed by Israeli troops near the Gaza border earlier on Saturday. An Israeli military spokeswoman said troops had shot at several gunmen in northern Gaza, and hit two of them. One of the slain gunmen belonged to Islamic Jihad and another to a renegade militant group called the Popular Resistance Committees, members of both groups said.