HIGHLIGHTS: 15 of 27 Injured Teen-age Civilians, 3 of them Children, 6 of them in Serious Condition||Hamas Vows Revenge||Resistance Attacks Settlers Near Hebron, Al-Khalil, Wounding 4 of them||Seven Palestinians Killed in Separate Clashes Across the Territories|| Muqataa Siege Enters its Second Week Amid Reports of Sickness Among the Building's 250 Armed Defenders|| STORY: Israeli helicopters fired missiles into Gaza City Thursday, wounding a top Palestinian activist and killing two others in violence likely to dismay the United States as it seeks Arab support for possible war against Iraq.

Mohammad Deif, shadowy commander of the Islamic group Hamas' military wing and intended target of the missiles, was injured but his life was not in danger, Hamas sources told Reuters.

Thousands of Hamas supporters carried Hamas flags in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood where the missiles struck.

"We congratulate the Palestinian people and the Muslim nation on the survival of Mohammad Deif," a speaker said.

Israeli security sources said Deif was believed dead.

Palestinian hospital officials said 15 of 27 people wounded were civilians under age 18, three of them small children. Six people were in critical condition, they said.

Hamas, at the forefront of a two-year-old Palestinian uprising, said two of its members were killed in a car hit by the missiles. It vowed revenge with stepped-up resistance bombings inside Israel.

HAMAS MISSILES HIT ISRAEL

In the West Bank, four Israeli settlers were shot and wounded in their car by suspected Palestinian resistance men near the city of Hebron, the occupation army said. It said it disarmed a car bomb in Baqa Asharqiya in the northern West Bank.

The night before, Hamas activist s launched three Qassam rockets from Gaza territory into the nearby Israeli town of Sderot. No one was injured.

On July 23, a missile from an Israeli F-16 jet killed Deif's predecessor, Salah Shehada, his aide and 14 other Palestinians including nine children in the same building, in an attack condemned worldwide for killing innocents.

Israel blamed an intelligence lapse for those deaths.

Deif eluded an Israeli attempt to kill him last year when a helicopter gunship blew apart his car seconds after he jumped out. Deif has been on Israel's wanted list for a decade.

Claiming self-defense, its occupation army regularly uses airborne missiles in "pre-emptive" strikes against Palestinian activists it blames for orchestrating attacks on Israelis.

Palestinians say the tactic is state-sponsored assassination and it has been condemned abroad.

SEVEN PALESTINIANS KILLED IN SEPARATE CLASHES ACROSS THE TERRITORIES

Earlier in Hebron, a 14-month-old Palestinian girl, Gharam al-Tel, died from tear-gas inhalation as scuffles erupted between Palestinian residents of the West Bank city and Israeli occupation troops trying to impose a lockdown on Palestinian neighbourhoods, reoccupied like most of the territory since June.

Near the West Bank town of Tulkarem, on the northwest boundary with Israel, an Israeli army officer and a wanted local Hamas leader were killed in a gun battle as the Israelis scoured the area for Resistance activists..

Around dawn, a Palestinian gunman from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Arafat's Fatah movement, was shot dead trying to infiltrate the Alei Sinai settlement in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israeli troops were hunting another armed man in the same area.

An armoured column made an incursion into the northeast of the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants fired three rockets into southern Israel late Wednesday, wounding one Israeli and starting a fire in a factory.

In the northern West Bank city of Jenin, Palestinian Mahmud Idris, 52, was killed at dawn by Israeli troops who entered the western sector of the town, a Palestinian security source said, giving no further details.

MUQATAA SIEGE ENTER ITS SECOND WEEK

Meanwhile, the standoff at Arafat's besieged Ramallah base, the Muqataa, entered its second week with reports of sickness among the 250 armed defenders who have vowed to fight to the last man should Israeli troops try to enter the battle-scarred building.

French rights activist Claude Leostic, who spent several weeks inside Arafat's compound during a previous siege from March to May, said people were crammed into very limited space, with several suffering from respiratory and gastric ailments.

Separately, a Palestinian was shot dead trying to infiltrate a Jewish settlement in Gaza and a wanted Islamic activist was killed in an Israeli special-forces raid on his West Bank cave hideout in which an occupation army lieutenant also died.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian policeman stands guard, as other policemen check a car destroyed by Israeli missiles in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza Strip on September 26, 2002. Israeli forces killed two people and wounded 27 others in the attack, Palestinian witnesses and officials said. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuter