By DPA
Gaza City : Israeli tanks rolled into the central Gaza Strip early Thursday, sparking heavy gun battles with local Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters confronting them, and killing at least eight people, Palestinian witnesses and medical officials said.
Seven of the dead were were members of Hamas' armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, and one was a civilian, Hamas said. Another eight people were wounded.
The incursion was the second since Hamas seized full control of the Gaza Strip nearly three weeks ago from the Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, with whom it had until then shared a unity government.
An Israeli army spokesman said the operation was aimed at foiling rocket fire from the Strip into southern Israel and at exposing tunnels near the border fence, which militants have in the past dug to attack Israeli army outposts on the Israeli side.
The tanks, backed by helicopter gunships, crossed hundreds of metres into central Gaza, reaching the eastern outskirts of the refugee camps of Al Burij and Al Maghazi.
The troops used tank for shelling and fired from Apache helicopters in clashes with crowds of militants and people in the two areas, witnesses said. The militant groups, also including Islamic Jihad, said they fired rocket-propelled grenades at the troops.