The Israeli army killed at least four Palestinian gunmen and five civilians in air and ground strikes in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Thursday, witnesses and hospital officials said.
Hamas said one of its militants was killed and three were wounded by an Israeli missile in the central Gaza Strip after they had tried to fire mortar bombs into Israel.
Another militant with Hamas, an Islamist group, was killed and three were wounded by a missile attack on a militant training camp near the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian hospital staff and a Hamas official said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed there had been a missile attack on a gunman in the central Gaza Strip and said she was checking the report of the Rafah strike.
An earlier incursion by Israeli troops near the town of Khan Younis was a hunt for militants who fire short-range rockets into Israel, the Israeli army said.
One rocket fired on Thursday landed north of the Israeli city Ashkelon, 17 km from Gaza -- the furthest a Palestinian rocket has ever penetrated into Israel, the army said. A second landed in the garden of a house in Sderot, a police spokesman said.
After the Ashkelon attack, which caused no casualties or damage, Israeli warplanes bombed three buildings in the Gaza Strip, causing extensive damage.
Two of the buildings were linked to the militant group Islamic Jihad and the third to Hamas, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
