Israeli occupation troops backed by tanks and a helicopter entered the Rafah refugee camp on Sunday hunting for tunnels used to smuggle weapons and drugs into the Gaza Strip . Two Palestinians were killed and 28 wounded, witnesses and hospital officials saidThe Palestinians said the occupation soldiers blew up five houses, while Israeli occupation army officials said one house was blown up and other houses were damaged when the occupation troops came in and destroyed the tunnels.

The occupation army said the Palestinians suffered casualties after they opened fire on the occupation troops and threw grenades at them.

Along the nearby border with Egypt, meanwhile, Israeli occupation soldiers killed two armed men who crossed from Egypt, the occupation army said. Three occupation soldiers were wounded in the clash.

One of the Palestinians killed at Rafah was a four-year-old boy, family members and a hospital official said. Four of the wounded Palestinians were in critical condition, Dr. Ali Mussa at the Rafah hospital said.

Moussa Bereka, a relative of the dead boy, said the 60 people in his extended family ran from the house in their pajamas and the boy, Tawfik Hussan Bereka, was wounded as they ran, and died later at the hospital. "They did not even give us one minute to evacuate our belongings or to leave safely," he said.

However the commander of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv, said the occupation troops entered the camp shortly after midnight and no houses were blown up until almost 5 a.m.

"The occupants were given at least 35 minutes to get out of the house," he told The Associated Press.

Not far away, Israeli occupation soldiers killed two armed men who had crossed from Egypt into southern Israel, Ziv said. Three occupation soldiers were wounded in the gunfight. The two infiltrators were probably Palestinians but their identity had not yet been established, the occupation army said.

The clash took place a few hundred yards from Yavul, a cooperative farm village.

The infiltrators could have come from the part of Rafah which is on the Egyptian side of the border, or they could have crossed into Egypt from the Gaza Strip, perhaps through a tunnel, traveled south along the border and then crossed into Israel, Ziv said.

In the past armed Palestinians have entered Israel from the Gaza Strip and tried to get into Israeli villages.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian Sadja Abuhashi, aged 5, screams as a doctor attends to a bullet wound to her hand, shortly after she was brought to a hospital, in the West Bank city of Nablus, Saturday, Oct 12, 2002. According to her father, she was wounded when an apparent stray bullet from an Israeli machine gun entered her home through a window. Many of the residents of Nablus have have been stuck in their homes for weeks, a measure the Israeli Government insists is necessary to help prevent terror attacks. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)