Israeli troops backed by helicopters have clashed with Palestinian fighters inside Gaza near the strip's key commercial crossing, and several Palestinians were wounded, witnesses and medics said. The clash took place early on Saturday on the edge of a Hamas stronghold near the Karni crossing. An Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at the Palestinian fighters, witnesses said.Seven Palestinians were earlier killed on Friday in the continuing Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip while another was shot dead in the West Bank. Two of these were killed by an Israeli air strike that, an army spokesman said, was directed against "two armed cells" in the Al-Atatra area of Beit Lahiya which has been the scene of the deadliest fighting and attacks over the last two days. "We identified hitting both of them," the spokesman said. The victims' names were not immediately released.
In another incident, nineteen-year-old Motaz al-Firi was killed by Israeli tank fire in Atatra and 20-year-old Shadi Omar, who medics said was deaf, was shot in the chest and killed. Earlier during the day, a Palestinian was killed in another Israeli air raid in the same area. An 11-year-old boy died of wounds sustained in an Israeli shooting a day earlier near Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, medics said. In the occupied West Bank, another Palestinian was shot dead in clashes with Israeli forces in Nablus.