GAZA: Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian and wounded two others in a confrontation near a Gaza Strip border crossing yesterday, the Israeli army and Palestinian medical workers said. A rocket fired from Gaza struck later in an open area near an Israeli town, causing no injury, the army said. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for that shooting.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the troops opened fire at Palestinians suspected of placing explosives near a security fence. One died of injuries, a second was taken to hospital and three others were seized, the spokeswoman said.

The fatality was the first since August along the tense border of the coastal territory ruled by Hamas that has remained largely quiet since an Israeli offensive that ended in January.

Gaza medics said they retrieved the body of a Palestinian who they described as unarmed and 20 years old after the incident at the Karni crossing in central Gaza, and that Israel had picked up another Palestinian, 16, who appeared to them to have been wounded critically.

A third wounded youth, listed as 15, was taken to a hospital in Gaza, the medics said.

Hamas police described those shot at yesterday as youths who had gone to the area near a Gaza border fence with Israel to hunt for dogs, but did not say whether they were armed.

In a separate incident, Israeli police said they arrested a Palestinian man, 18, near the Al Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem, after he lunged with a knife at a group of Israeli officers, said a police spokesman, Shmuel Ben-Ruby.