Top Hamas militant killed in Gaza fighting

Three Palestinians, including a senior Gaza field commander of the violent Islamic Hamas group, were killed and 10 were wounded during a heavy exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip early today, Palestinian hospital sources and witnesses said.

An army spokeswoman was checking the reports and had no immediate comment. For more than a week, Israel’s military has been operating in the southern Gaza town of Rafah to try to find and destroy tunnels used by Palestinians to smuggle weapons across the Egyptian border into Gaza.