Israeli helicopters fired at least three missiles at a target in Gaza City Wednesday, rocking the urban hub of the Gaza Strip and killing one person, Palestinian witnesses said. The target was not immediately clear, but the missiles apparently hit a small room in the vicinity of a compound housing Palestinian Authority offices, the witnesses said.

One person who was in the room at the time was killed, they said. The person's identity was not immediately known.

Witnesses at the scene said fragments of the missile were found in the room.

Israel has often fired missiles at Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip and West Bank since the start of a Palestinian uprising for independence, which began in September 2000 after a deadlock in peace talks.

At least 1,694 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed in the uprising.

Two Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation troops

Two armed Palestinians were killed by the Israeli occupation army as violence continued unabated in the occupied territories, while the United States turned up the diplomatic heat on the Palestinians.

Occupation soldiers were carrying out a search near the southern West Bank city of Hebron when the two Palestinians hidden in a cave fired at them.

The occupation troops returned fire, killing the Palestinians, occupation army sources said Wednesday.

The Israeli occupation army continued its systematic sweep of the West Bank but came under fire Monday over the killing of a 95-year-old Palestinian woman, the oldest victim of the 26-month-old uprising.

The occupation army and Palestinian witnesses had diverging versions of the incident, but the Israeli occupation army launched an investigation into the shooting, which once again raised the controversial issue of Israeli occupation soldiers' loose rules of engagement.

The incident comes after an unusual and strongly-worded petition by staff of the UN Relief and Works Agency demanding an end to Israeli "harrassment" following the killing of one of their colleagues last month, and condemnations of the occupation army demolition of a Gaza building where 500 tonnes of UN food aid for the Palestinians were stored.

As Israel was under scrutiny for its actions in the territories, Washington gave it a boost during a ritual UN general assembly vote aimed at reaffirming the rights of the Palestinians by voting for the first time against a resolution condemning the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem.

Instead of abstaining as in previous years, the United States voted against the non-binding resolution which says that Israel's Basic Law -- which proclaimed Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state -- was "illegal and therefore null and void and has no validity whatsoever."

The US vote was a second nudge at the Palestinians a day after US President George W. Bush temporarily downgraded and then reinstated the status of the Palestine Liberation Organization's office in the United States.

The resolution on Jerusalem was nevertheless passed by 154 votes to five, with six abstentions. It was among a series of texts adopted by overwhelming majorities, including one "stressing the illegality of Israel's settlement construction and activities on the occupied Syrian Golan since 1967".

But Israel risked annoying its US ally with a reported plan to delevop new housing units in 14 isolated West Bank settlements which the opposition Labour party has promised to dismantle if it wins the January 28 legislative elections.

As investigations continued into last Thursday's double attack on Israelis in Kenya for which Al-Qaeda is suspected, the daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper revealed that Osama bin Laden's terror network had planned to strike at the Israeli football team in Malta last October.

The attack was tharted when a Tunisian national was arrested by the Italian security services a day before the Euro 2004 qualifier, it said.

Three Israelis were among the 13 victims of a resistance bombing in a hotel near Mombasa, Kenya, as two missiles were fired unsuccessfully at a tourist-packed Israeli charter plane.

In the West Bank, the last remnants of the defunct Oslo accords were continuing to fall apart, as the Israeli occupation army closed two Israeli-Palestinian security liaison offices.

Ribhi Arafat, head of the liaison offices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said the offices in the towns of Jenin and Ramallah were shut down.

The occupation army said Palestinian policemen were ordered out of the Jenin office "due to their current lack of a spirit of cooperation and because the presence of armed Palestinians in an occupation army post poses a danger for our forces."

A Palestinian trying to infiltrate the southern Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz was shot by Israeli occupation soldiers before being arrested Wednesday, an occupation army spokesman told AFP.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians flee after throwing stones at an Israeli occupation army jeep