The raids in central Gaza Strip came after Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, three of them teenagers, who the army said were on their way to attack Jewish settlements.

In the Israeli village of Maor, close to the West Bank, police said they killed a Palestinian who broke into the home of an Israeli couple. Later, police found the scorched body of a 70-year-old Israeli man in the West Bank after a massive search.

The renewed violence disregarded U.S. calls for calm in the 27-month-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict to avoid complicating Washington's plans for a possible war on Iraq.

The Israeli army ordered infantry and armor backed by assault helicopters into the Nusairat, Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps early on Thursday. Ambulance workers said several Palestinians were wounded in raids which lasted several hours.

The camps are strongholds of Palestinian militants who have waged a campaign of suicide bombings and ambush shootings as part of an uprising for a Palestinian state.

Israeli guards fired teargas and stun grenades in a large West Bank detention camp on Thursday to break up a protest by Palestinian prisoners over alleged mistreatment.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said earlier this week he was feared Israel could exploit a U.S.-led war on Iraq to escalate attacks on Palestinians.

A top Palestinian human rights activist, Mustafa Barghouthi, called on Thursday for a "mass international presence on the ground" to protect Palestinians from Israeli attack if Washington launched a strike to oust President Saddam Hussein.

Palestinians obtained self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under interim deals in 1994-95 but negotiations on a state broke down in mid-2000, sparking an uprising in which at least 1,760 Palestinians and 676 Israelis have been killed.

MILITANTS KILL ELDERLY ISRAELI

The body of Israeli man Masoud Elon was found in a valley near the Jewish settlement of Bekaot after a claim of responsibility for his death by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

The group said in a statement on the Lebanese Hizbollah's al-Manar television station it had killed a "Jewish settler" in the Bekaot area to avenge the killing of a Palestinian.

Elon's family said the elderly man would frequently travel from his home in northern Israel into the West Bank to hand out clothes to Palestinian laborers and buy citrus fruits.

"The children would run after him and he would give them candies. He wasn't selling them anything, or doing business, he just did it to pass the time," his son Yakov told Israel Radio.

On Wednesday night, troops shot dead three Palestinian youths, one aged 15 and the other two 16, who they said had been trying to attack a Jewish settlement in northern Gaza armed with wire-cutters and a knife.

The army also said it killed a militant on his way to bomb a settlement in the West Bank.

"Thank God he got what he always dreamt of -- martyrdom," Atteya Dawass, the father of one of the Gaza youngsters, said at their funeral.

Dawass said his son Mohammed had been driven to despair by Israeli military actions against Palestinians during the revolt and decided to avenge his people with a suicide mission.

"Kids of their age should be playing in the streets or with computers but Israel has deprived our children of every joy of life," he said.

In another incident, police killed an armed Palestinian who broke into a home in the Israeli village of Maor, five km (three miles) from the porous boundary with the West Bank.

The owner of the home, Swiss immigrant Roland Mori, said the intruder got off one wild shot before his rifle jammed and the couple escaped.

"I shouted to my wife, in French, to flee and I immediately began to throw everything I found on the living room table at the terrorist," Mori told reporters.

(China Daily January 3, 2002)