Palestinian security sources in Gaza said Israeli soldiers and Border Police forces killed at predawn on Tuesday a militant of theIslaimc Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis.

Israeli Radio reported that the man was planning on carrying out attack in Gaza's Gush Katif settlement bloc over the next few days.He threw an explosive device at the soldiers from the roof of a house, after which the security forces fired back and killed him, the radio added.

Meanwhile, a Qassam rocket was fired on Tuesday at the Gadid settlement in the Gaza Strip, but did not explode, the radio said, adding Israeli troops also discovered a weapons cache in the settlement of Ganei Tal in the Gaza Strip.

Before dawn Tuesday, Israeli troops arrested 10 Palestinian suspects in the West Bank, who were members of radical Palestinian groups of Fatah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Hebron Bethlehem and Nablus.

Earlier on Monday night, Israeli undercover Border Police troops arrested an Islamic Jihad activist near the West Bank town of Tulkarem on suspicion of planning to carry out a suicide attack inside Israel.

Palestinian residents in the town of Rafah said the Israeli army bulldozers destroyed three Palestinian houses situated above a previously covered tunnel in the town on Monday night.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been mounting with death tolls on both sides rising.

The Tuesday's deaths have brought the number killed since the start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in late September 2000 to 2,753, including 2,025 Palestinians and 678 Israelis, according to a preliminary estimate.

(Xinhua News Agency December 11, 2002)