Israeli troops kill 12 Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank

GAZA, July 19 (Reuters) Israeli troops killed 12 Palestinians in clashes in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank today, medics said, including four gunmen and two civilians as tanks pushed into a central Gaza refugee camp.

The Gaza raid was part of a three-week-old offensive to recover a captured soldier and halt rocket fire.

Shooting broke out around the Maghazi Camp as Israeli troops crossed the border into the territory before dawn.

Three militants from the governing Hamas group were killed, along with one gunman from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, medics and Palestinian security sources said.

The two civilians killed included a 16-year-old.

Later in the day, Israel killed three Palestinians in Gaza in what the army called two air strikes against militants.

Medics did not specify if the dead, including a woman, were armed.

More than 60 Palestinians, including 10 children, were wounded in Gaza clashes today, medics said.

The United States stepped up the evacuation of Americans in Gaza. Officials said 68 U S nationals were pulled out of the strip on July 8 and another 104 today.

Gaza has been under siege since gunmen captured an Israeli soldier in a raid over the border on June 25.

Around 100 Palestinians, over half of them militants, have been killed in the offensive. Israeli planes have also bombarded buildings of the Hamas-led Palestinian government and knocked out bridges, roads and a power plant.

WEST BANK GUNMEN KILLED In the West Bank, troops backed by armoured vehicles surrounded a Palestinian security compound in the city of Nablus and killed three gunmen of Abbas's Fatah faction, medics said.

Troops detained Palestinian security men at the scene, an Israeli military source said.

Israeli bulldozers then tore down a building in Nablus used by the Hamas-led Interior Ministry as well as offices used by a security service that falls under Hamas's jurisdiction.

Israel has bombed several buildings in Gaza used by the Islamic militant group Hamas and the government it leads, including the office of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

The army has been operating near Maghazi, a district of rundown cement block buildings in the densely-populated strip of 1.4 million, to track down militants.

Israel holds Hamas responsible for the capture of Gilad Shalit, 19, by three militant groups, including Hamas's armed wing. Israel has rejected their demand to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the tank gunner.

Israel is also fighting Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon after they abducted two soldiers in a cross-border raid last week and killed eight others.

Israel has said it will continue fighting on both fronts until it gets its soldiers back and removes the threat on its borders.

Both Hizbollah and Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel, though the Lebanese guerrillas have far more powerful and longer-range rockets than the homemade missiles used by the militants in Gaza.

Israel pulled troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip last summer after 38 years of occupation.

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