Palestinian killed in Gaza Strip

Reuters:

The Israeli army shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded two others in the north Gaza Strip close to the border with Israel on Saturday, local medics said.

The Israeli army confirmed the incident and said that troops had spotted three men crawling towards the border fence and had shot at them after they refused calls to stop, did not identify themselves and ignored warning shots fired in the air.

An army spokeswoman could not confirm whether the three men were armed or if their actions were hostile.

Palestinian medics said the three men had come from a refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip but did not know whether they were militants.

Israel has declared areas close to the border fence in the northern part of the costal territory which militants have used to fire rockets into Israel as a no-go area for Palestinians and has used artillery and helicopter gunships to enforce this.

Palestinians have condemned the buffer zone as a re-occupation of land evacuated by Israel last year.