A Palestinian woman cries in front of her demolished house in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah

Additional reporting by Samer Khuwayera, IOL Palestine Correspondent

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, June 6 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The Israeli occupation forces assassinated 2 Palestinian activists ambushed in a house near Tulkarem only a day after a peace summit in Jordan attended by Israeli and Palestinian premiers, King Abdallah II of Jordan and U.S. President George W. Bush.

Two members from the Islamic resistance group Hamas allegedly preparing a suicide attack were shot dead by Israeli troops in the northern West Bank Thursday night, Israeli military sources said.

They were both killed in a firefight with troops who ambushed them in a house near the town of Tulkarem, they said, adding that a third Palestinian was wounded in the shooting.

The Israeli sources claimed the activists were preparing to carry out a suicide bombing inside Israel. A Kalashnikov assault rifle and a pistol were found beside their bodies, they said.

But a spokesman for the Islamic Jihad resistance group told AFP that two of its members, named as Adel Abu Zeitun and Kamal Chalabi, were killed in a gun battle in the area.

Palestinian witnesses confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that two Palestinians were killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops near Atill, just north of Tulkarem.

They said that the bodies of the two men, whom they said were not from the area, were taken away by the soldiers.

A senior aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Nabil Abu Rudeina, reacted to the killings by saying Israel had already returned to "its assassination policy after the two summits," referring to a pair of U.S.-led peace summits this week in Jordan and Egypt to kickstart the so-called peace roadmap.

"Israel is working to destroy the results of these two summits and is not ready to implement the 'roadmap' and its promises," he told AFP.

The deaths brought to at least 3,280 the number of people killed since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, including 2,478 Palestinians and 742 Israelis.

Earlier, Israeli police said they discovered the bodies of a young Israel man and a teenage girl whom they claim were murdered by what they call Palestinian militants in a farming village just west of occupied Jerusalem.

Early Friday, three mortar rounds were fired at a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip and a fourth at an Israeli army position, but caused no casualties, an Israeli army spokesman said.

The spokesman said that soldiers came under heavy attack after moving in to destroy two tunnels under the Egyptian border in the Gaza town of Rafah. None of them was hurt, but a Palestinian was thought to have been wounded.

But Palestinian sources said that the Israeli occupation forces launched an incursion early Friday into Rafah injuring a Palestinian child and demolishing 10 Palestinian houses under the pretext of destroying tunnels under the Egyptian border in the Gaza town of Rafah.

Eyewitnesses said that five Israeli tanks and two bulldozers stormed into the Al Kassassin area near Saladdin gate in Rafah and completely destroyed 10 houses.

Palestinian gunmen resisted the Israeli troops and violent clashes took place between the two sides, they added.

Islamic Jihad used loud speakers in the town to announce that its armed wing was able to injure an Israeli soldier.

In the southern Gaza Strip, meanwhile, a Palestinian medical source said two young men aged 21 and 22 were seriously wounded Thursday night by shots fired by Israeli soldiers in separate incidents near the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah.