An Israeli helicopter fired at least one missile into a Palestinian refugee camp as armored combat vehicles invaded the area in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said. The invasion sparked a gun battle as Palestinians, roused by a message broadcast on mosque loudspeakers, took up arms to oppose the advancing forces. Families in the area of Brazil fled for refuge away from the fighting, witnesses said.

A hospital source said one man was killed by shrapnel from a tank shell and one was injured with bullet wounds in his legs.

Up to 50 tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled into two districts of Palestinian-ruled Rafah and its Brazil camp near the border with Egypt. Israeli troops went house-to-house in searches.

Helicopters flew over the armored forces as they made their way deep into residential areas, and at least one fired what security sources and witnesses said was a missile.

Rafah has been a flash point of violence between Palestinian Resistance men and Israeli troops, which patrol a strip of land along the border between the Rafah area and Egypt.

Israel has raided the camp before in what it calls operations to destroy houses used by resistance men as cover to shoot on its occupation forces, or to destroy tunnels used to smuggle weapons.

It was the third major raid into the Gaza Strip this week. Israel sent forces into the central town of Deir al-Balah earlier in the week and arrested a Resistance leader.

Israeli tanks rolled into a Palestinian-controlled area of the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, triggering sporadic gun battles before withdrawing, witnesses said.

The occupation army said it arrested four men during that raid in the village of Beit Hanoun, north of Gaza City, and arrested six people in other parts of Gaza during the night.

The Rafah raid came hours after the Israeli occupation army reported a mortar had been fired, apparently from the Gaza Strip, and landed in a Negev community, and an anti-tank rocket landed near the internationally illegal Jewish settlement of Netzarim, slightly damaging a bus.

There were no injuries in either incident.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians look through the rubble of the former home of a late Hamas Resistance activist which was demolished overnight by Israeli occupation army ground troops, in the Shijaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2002. Until today, a reported thirty-two people had been living in the home of the militant, Osama Hales, who was killed by Israeli occupation troops months ago. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)