Israelis kill four in Gaza clashes

Gaza City: Four Palestinian fighters were killed and an Israeli soldier wounded in clashes on 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 Palestinian fighters also fired several mortar rounds into Israel and that it responded with two air strikes just inside Gaza.

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

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

In a controversial move, Israel has also barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip for a week, in a move media have assailed as a serious violation of press freedom.

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

Looming confrontation

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 on the tour.

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

At the time they made clear the decision would be reviewed on a daily basis.

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

But again they made it clear that the final decision would depend on continued calm.

"Depending on the security situation evaluation, the crossings might reopen tomorrow," army spokesman Peter Lerner had said.

The UN Relief and Works Agency warned on Tuesday that it would have to suspend food distribution in Gaza from Thursday evening if deliveries do not resume.

"Food distribution to 750,000 people will be suspended at close of business on Thursday unless we can on an urgent basis get into the Gaza Strip wheat, powdered milk, luncheon meat and oil," its spokesman Chris Gunness said.