Four Palestinians were wounded by Israeli rocket fire in the Gaza Strip late Tuesday, witnesses and hospital officials said, but the Israeli army denied that any such attack took place.
Hospital officials said four Palestinians were injured from shrapnel as a result of two rocket attacks at the Rafah refugee camp near the border with Egypt, while another was shot with a live bullet to the abdomen in a gun-battle between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinians.
But the Israeli army issued a categorical denial.
"Contrary to Palestinian reports that an army helicopter fired rockets in the Gaza Strip, nothing of the kind took place, there was no firing from the air or from the ground towards the Gaza Strip," the army said in a statement.
"This information is part of a continuing campaign by the Palestinians to spread lies and propaganda," it said.
Witnesses and a Palestinian security official told AFP that two Palestinian houses and a Palestinian police post were damaged in the attacks that they said occurred at 8.30 p.m. (1830 GMT) and at 10:30 p.m. (2030 GMT).
"They fired rockets against our post but there was no-one inside because after the first attack we were afraid and we left," the security official told AFP.
A source with a Palestinian human rights group working in the camp said the two damaged houses belonged to a Mohammed Kishtah and a Talat Mahmud al-Aker.
The violence came despite a ceasefire announced by US President Bill Clinton at an emergency summit in Egypt aimed at halting almost three weeks of bloodletting in the Palestinian territories.
The army had announced in an earlier statement that it had fired an anti-tank missile against houses in Rafah overnight after a nearby army position came under prolonged gunfire by armed Palestinians.
Elsewhere in Rafah, some 500 supporters of Yasser Arafat's Fateh faction, some of whom were armed, staged a protest against the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement and called for Palestinians to pursue the uprising in the occupied territories – GAZA CITY (AFP)
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