GAZA CITY (AFP) — Israeli forces entered the southern Gaza Strip early on Tuesday and carried out searches accompanied by exchanges of fire and explosions, wounding at least five people, medics said.

About 20 armoured vehicles accompanied by bulldozers and two helicopter gunships moved 1.5 kilometres (one mile) inside the Hamas-controlled Strip near the Kissufim crossing point with Israel.

They searched a school and other buildings in Al-Qarara and Wadi Al-Salqa. Israeli troops and Palestinian militants exchanged fire and a number of blasts were heard in the area.

“Five people were wounded by gunfire and missiles fired by the Israeli occupation. One of them is in a serious condition,” Dr Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services, told AFP.

He added that three were wounded when an Israeli tank shell struck a house east of Al-Qarara village.

The army said in a statement that during the operation “forces identified several gunmen approaching the soldiers. The force fired at them and identified hitting one of them.”

In an earlier operation Israeli aircraft raided the Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip overnight, targeting militants of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). No one was wounded in the strike.

A military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv confirmed that the army had “carried out a routine operation in the area,” adding that Palestinian militants had fired one rocket at southern Israel on Monday without causing casualties.

A member of the DFLP’s military wing was killed late on Monday and three other Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli air raid on the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics said.

At least 388 people have been killed, most of them Gaza militants, since Israel and the Palestinians relaunched formal peace talks at a US conference in November, according to an AFP count.

Since the outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising in 2000, at least 6,351 people have been killed, the vast majority of them Palestinians.