Israel kills 5 Palestinians during Gaza clashes

GAZA, Oct 12 (Reuters) Israeli forces killed three Hamas militants and two bystanders during a raid in the Gaza Strip today, pressing an almost 4-month offensive launched after a soldier was abducted, witnesses and medics said.

Hamas's armed wing responded by firing six make-shift rockets into Israel. No one was injured. The rockets were the first fired by Hamas militants in over a month but other militant groups have kept up such attacks.

Hamas controls the Palestinian government.

Overnight, Israeli troops backed by helicopter gunships entered the southern Gaza village of Abassan under dark, touching off clashes. The slain bystanders were a man and his teenage son, doctors said.

The Israeli army confirmed its forces were operating in the area, saying they were looking for facilities used by militants waging a 6-year-old Palestinian revolt. Troops fired on gunmen who tried to attack them, an army spokesman said.

''This is an area believed to conceal tunnels and other forms of infrastructure used by terrorist groups,'' he said.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 after a 38-year occupation in what it said was a spur to revive peace talks.

But violence continued around the impoverished coastal territory, culminating in a cross-border raid on June 25 in which Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers and abducted a third, Corporal Gilad Shalit.

Israel has since mounted several major military operations in Gaza which it said were aimed at retrieving Shalit and stemming cross-border rocket fire by militants. Around 230 Palestinians, half of them civilians, have been killed.

The governing Palestinian faction Hamas, some of whose gunmen took part in Shalit's abduction, says the soldier should be traded for Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

The Israeli government has publicly refused a prisoner swap although political sources expect it to relent as part of an Egyptian-brokered deal.

REUTERS MQA BS1539