NABLUS, West Bank, January 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli occupation troops on Friday, January 24, killed two Palestinian fighters, including a woman, in the West Bank while another Palestinian woman died of a heart attack as the Israeli army pounded Gaza.

The two fighters, who were accompanied by two others, were killed in a shootout with Israeli forces after they threw hand grenades at an Israeli military outpost in northern Nablus.

A third fighter was injured in the shootout and arrested by the Israeli army while a manhunt was launched to track down the fourth.

Although Palestinian women had carried out martyr operations in the past, this is the first time that female fighters join hands with men in anti-Israel combat attacks.

Late Thursday, January 23, three Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush near Al-Khalil in the southern West Bank.

In Gaza City, a Palestinian woman died of a heart attack during an Israeli helicopter missile attack on Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources told Agence France Presse (AFP).

Fatma al-Mashharawi, in her 30s, was an in-patient at Al-Ahli hospital where a missile landed on a chapel inside the medical compound causing heavy damage, the sources said.

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses told IslamOnline that the Israeli occupation army shelled in the small hours of Friday Palestinian metal workshops in el-Sabrah area in Gaza City.

Israeli helicopter gunships fired at least eight missiles at Palestinian workshops, they confirmed.

In mounting aggression, more than 20 Israeli tanks and jeeps stormed Zeitoun area in the south of Gaza City under cover of heavy shelling by two U.S.-made Apaches.

Palestinian medical sources said a Palestinian boy sustained injuries from shrapnel of shells fired by the Israeli tanks.

A Palestinian family searches for their belongings in the rubble of the house of Masaoud Ayyad after Israeli soldiers blew it up

Eyewitnesses told IslamOnline that Israeli troops destroyed the house of martyr Massud Ayaad who was assassinated by Israeli soldiers two years ago.

The Israeli forces dynamited the three-storey house after booting out the residents, the witnesses confirmed.

They added that the occupation forces abducted five members of the Ayyad family.

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses said Palestinian fighters battled the Israeli occupation forces who were trying to storm Zeitoun area.

In Rafah, Israeli troops backed by 25 tanks and air cover by U.S.-made Apaches rolled into el-Brazil camp in Rafah and razed a number of Palestinian houses adjacent to the border line with Egypt.

Palestinian medical sources told IslamOnline that Hisham Mustafa Abu Taha, 34, was injured in the Israeli shelling.

A Palestinian boy with a stone in his hand defies Israeli tanks and bulldozers in Gaza

Shortly after the raid, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic resistance group Hamas, fired home-made rockets across the Israeli border from the northern Gaza Strip, only causing material damage in southern Israel.

The Israeli army staged a retaliatory incursion into the autonomous Palestinian town of Beit Hanun.

Clashes soon broke out between soldiers, gunmen and stone-throwers, leaving four Palestinians wounded, one of them seriously, medical sources said.

Arafat's top aide Nabil Abu Rudeina condemned "Israel's dangerous military aggression especially in Gaza and Nablus," calling on the international community to intervene.

The latest deaths brought to 2,883 the number of people killed since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli occupation in September 2000, including 2,140 Palestinians and 687 Israelis.