The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Gaza City

Four Palestinian militants were killed and an Israeli soldier was wounded along the Gaza border on Wednesday in the latest flare-up to rattle a nearly five-month lull and imperil aid deliveries.

The Israeli army said militants also fired several mortar rounds into Israel and that it responded with two air strikes just inside Gaza.

Witnesses said the four Palestinians who died were members of the Islamist Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said soldiers exchanged fire with gunmen who attempted to place an explosive device near the security fence in the central Gaza Strip.

"Throughout the exchange of fire a number of mortar rounds were fired at IDF (military) forces and an explosive device was detonated," she said.

"The IDF force identified hitting four gunmen. Grenades and various weapons were found on their bodies," the spokeswoman said, adding that a soldier was hospitalised with light wounds.

The gunbattle broke out after Israeli armoured vehicles crossed into the territory near the city of Khan Yunis, Palestinian witnesses and security officials said.

Two aircraft carried out strikes in open areas several hundred metres (yards) inside the Gaza Strip, the army spokeswoman said.

The four deaths brought to 550 the toll since Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks 12 months ago, the majority of them Gaza militants.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum called the killing of the gunmen "an enormous Israeli crime which constitutes a grave violation of the truce."

A further five mortar rounds were fired into Israel later on Wednesday, a military spokeswoman said, adding that no injuries or damage was reported.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on Tuesday of a looming confrontation with Hamas despite the Egyptian-mediated June 19 ceasefire.

"I have no doubt that the situation between us and Hamas is an unavoidable pre-confrontation situation," Olmert said while touring the military headquarters responsible for the Gaza region.

"It's only a question of time and not a question of if," his office quoted him as saying.

The renewed violence on the Gaza border came as Israel said aid deliveries to the impoverished territory would be dependent on a sustained period of calm.

After a flare-up last week, Israel further tightened the punishing blockade it imposed when Hamas seized control of Gaza last year, closing its border crossings to fuel and food deliveries by the European Union and United Nations.

It only allowed fuel deliveries to Gaza's sole power plant to resume on Tuesday, a day after the Palestinians said they had been forced to shut it down for want of diesel.

Israel said the decision would be reviewed daily.

Defence officials said just hours before Wednesday's clashes that they were considering allowing food deliveries to resume on Thursday after the United Nations said it was close to having to suspend the distribution of rations to some 750,000 people.