The bloodshed, which followed a mortar bomb attack that wounded 10 Israeli soldiers, showed that renewed US peace efforts after the Iraq war have made little impact on the daily violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinian officials said Israeli undercover soldiers who drove up to a Palestinian guard post in a civilian car shot dead two security men and wounded two others in an exchange of fire near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.

An army spokesman had no immediate comment.

Earlier, an Israeli armored force backed by helicopter gunships raided the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, adjacent to the army base hit by the mortar bombs.

Hospital officials said some 20 Palestinians were wounded by a missile fired by an Apache helicopter. Witnesses said Israeli bulldozers destroyed four houses before the force withdrew.

An Israeli military source said the operation was aimed at curtailing mortar bomb attacks on army positions and Jewish settlements in the area.

The violence erupted ahead of US-arranged talks which Palestinian officials said were planned for Saturday between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his new reformist Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas on a peace "road map."

The militant Islamic group Hamas, spearheading a 31-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood and opposition to the "road map," said it fired the mortar bombs into the base located in the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekelim.

ROCKET HITS TOWN NEAR SHARON'S RANCH

In a separate incident, three Israelis were slightly hurt when a homemade Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip slammed into a factory warehouse in Sderot, a southern Israeli town near Sharon's ranch, security officials said.

In a newspaper interview published on Tuesday, Sharon rejected any talk of dismantling Jewish settlements in the foreseeable future despite US calls for conciliatory gestures to advance the new peace plan backed by Washington.

The Palestinians accept the road map but Israel does not. It outlines reciprocal steps leading to an independent Palestinian state by 2005 in the West Bank and Gaza, lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

Sharon, who has long championed settlements, sees President Bush in Washington on May 20 to voice reservations about a plan that Israel says cannot be implemented until Abbas carries out a mandated crackdown on militants.

Palestinians say Abbas must be able to show his people a political dividend, such as an easing of Israel's military grip in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, before he can rein in the gunmen.

Secretary of State Colin Powell asked both sides during a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories last weekend to begin putting the road map into motion. But each demanded the other move first on the critical security front.

(China Daily May 14, 2003)