The Israeli army destroyed a Palestinian electric cable factory Saturday morning east of Gaza City, Palestinian security sources.
The factory, near the Muntar crossing point (known to Israelis as Karni) between the Gaza Strip and Israel, had already been seriously damaged by shelling on Friday, the sources told AFP.
The Israeli army claimed it had opened fire following shooting by Palestinian gunmen in the same area.
According to military sources, the shooting originated from the factory, said the agency.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts are underway to arrange truce talks between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat despite another Palestinian death in the West Bank Saturday.
A Palestinian man was killed and two others injured in a mysterious explosion overnight in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, AFP and Haaretz reported.
The victim was named as Azzedin Abu Aissa, but there was no information on the nature of the explosions.
In the past, similar blasts have been caused by Palestinians handling explosives.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell stepped up pressure for face-to-face truce talks to help bring an end to the ongoing violence in the Occupied Territories.
Although Peres said in Italy he would meet Arafat "probably next week" in the Middle East, top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said no date or venue had been set, and pressed home demands for the talks to get off the ground.
Peres, speaking in the Italian town of Cernobbio, said there would be three meetings, "and we hope these three meetings will take place between the next week and the (United Nations) General Assembly, at the end of September," Haaretz quoted him as saying.
Erakat said: "For this meeting to be successful, it must establish a schedule to implement the Mitchell plan, put checks in place to oversee the freeze on developing settlements, international observers must be deployed in the Palestinian territories and Israeli blockades lifted."
Arafat and Peres shared the 1994 Nobel Peace prize for interim peace accords but recent talks have been unable to stem the killings, with 770 dead since last September, including 591 Palestinians and 157 Israelis, according to AFP estimates.
The Jerusalem Post quoted a senior source as saying Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had given Peres a "full mandate" to hold ceasefire talks and move forward the implementation of the Mitchell plan, which calls for a cooling-off period, a freeze on Jewish settlement development and a return to negotiations.
But Erakat accused the Israeli government of moving in the opposite direction, "tightening the blockade around Jerusalem and carrying out political assassinations" of Palestinian officials.
Arafat has appealed to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to "urgently" intervene against Israeli moves to militarily seal off Jerusalem, a senior aide told AFP on Friday.
The Palestinian leader sent similar messages to Arab League chief Amr Moussa and Jordan's King Abdullah II asking them to "urgently intervene to save Jerusalem," said Nabil Abu Rudeina.
The Palestinian leadership charged, after its weekly meeting Friday night, that Israel was moving forward with a plan to seal off Arab east Jerusalem from the West Bank and the Palestinian people, reported the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
Meanwhile, more than 2,500 people, many firing shots and chanting for revenge against Israel, turned out in the West Bank town of Tulkarem Friday for the funerals of two Palestinian activists assassinated by the Israeli army the previous day in a helicopter strike.
The Israeli army said it missed its intended target, Raad Mohammad Raaf al-Karami, a local official with Arafat's Fatah movement blamed by Israel for several killings.
Palestinian gunmen later claimed responsibility for killing one Israeli soldier and seriously wounding another near Tulkarem.
Later Friday, Israeli troops wounded seven Palestinians, most of them teenagers, in two confrontations in the Gaza Strip, hospital sources said.
An Israeli military spokesman said a local army post near the border with Egypt had come under "not less than 20 grenade attacks" during the day and that the army had responded only with automatic weapons.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell had spoken with both Arafat and Peres on Wednesday "to look to the prospect of their meeting (and) to discuss with them how it can be made productive and useful," AFP said.
But US officials said Peres may have been overly optimistic about expecting a meeting next week, noting that the Palestinians have set tough conditions – Albawaba.com
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