The body of a Palestinian man shot dead Monday by Israeli troops (AFP)

Additional Reporting By Moatesem al-Miniawi, IOL Correspondent

TULKAREM, West Bank, October 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Israeli occupation forces gunned down two Palestinian resistance activists within the past 24 hours, while a third Palestinian died of wounds he sustained earlier during an Israeli aggression on Gaza.

A member of the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad was shot dead by Israeli forces early Wednesday, October 29, east of Gaza City, Palestinian security sources and medics said.

The security sources said another man accompanying him was detained by the occupation army, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

They identified the slain activist as Mohammed Awad, 26.

"In the early morning hours, forces identified two suspicious characters traveling in an area forbidden to Palestinians near the Nahal Oz kibbutz," Israeli military sources said.

They added that the two had penetrated half-way into the 300-meter (yard) wide buffer zone between the collective farm, which is just inside Israel, and the Gaza Strip.

They said the other Palestinian had been wounded and was currently in Israeli custody.

This came few hours after Israeli special forces assassinated a member of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Palestinian security and medical sources said.

Ibrahim Al-Naamish, 30, was killed late Tuesday in a drive-by shooting by Israeli army special forces who were dressed in civilian clothes and driving a Subaru, witnesses told IslamOnline.net.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is the armed offshoot of Fatah movement.

They added that Moaz Gomaa, a 22-year-old passer-by, also suffered leg wounds in the shooting.

Meanwhile in Gaza, a 16-year-old Palestinian who was seriously wounded during an October 20 Israeli air raid on the Nusseirat refugee camp succumbed to his injuries, medics said Wednesday.

The teenager was identified as Salah Abdelghafar and his death brought to 12 the toll for the Nusseirat strike.

The latest fatality brings the death toll since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 to 3,589 including 2,674 Palestinians and 849 Israelis, according to a toll of Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Life Imprisonment

Meanwhile, a Hamas member was given nine consecutive life sentences by an Israerli military court Tuesday for allegedly plotting a bus bombing which killed nine passengers in northern Israel last year, military sources told AFP.

Mazen Fukha was also handed an additional 50-year jail term for the August 4, 2002, attack near the town of Safad, north of Lake Galilee, by the tribunal near the West Bank town of Nablus, the sources added.

The court's panel rejected the Palestinian's appeal that while he had been involved in other attacks, he had no connection to the Safad bombing.

Hamas' military wing, Ezzedine al-Qassem Brigades, said at the time that the attack was a "riposte to the killing of our leader Salah Shehade", who was blown to pieces in an Israeli air raid on Gaza City the previous month.