Israel bombards Palestinian targets in Gaza Strip

The Israeli army have bombarded Palestinian targets in the northern Gaza Strip, plunging a town into darkness and injuring four people including a 10 year-old boy.

The four victims suffered moderate shrapnel wounds.

The Palestinian police said the Israelis fired three surface-to-surface rockets at the town of Beit-Lahiya, north of Gaza City.

In Sunday's attack the projectiles hit an abandoned police station, a headquarters of Yasser Arafat's Fatah group and a civilian home. Beit-Lahiya was plunged into darkness as the power supply was knocked out.

The ceiling of the house collapsed, injuring a 60 year-old woman and a 10 year-old boy. The boy's father, Hamis Abu-Sultan, 42, showed reporters a bloodstained child's blanket. "What has this child done to the Israelis?" he said.

The army spokesman said the attack was in response to the firing of mortar bombs by the Palestinians at Nahal Oz, an Israeli communal settlement outside the Gaza Strip.

The fighting in the Gaza Strip has been intensifying with almost nightly mortar exchanges of and rocket and mortar fire.

Earlier on Sunday Palestinian gunmen killed a suspected collaborator with Israel in the West Bank.

The alleged informer, Mamoun Freij, 37, sat in his shop in the West Bank town of Tulkarem when three masked men entered, witnesses said. Mr Freij was hit by 14 bullets.

Asfah 77, a group believed to have ties to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility.