Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in a Gaza refugee camp this morning.
Witnesses in Rafah said soldiers on the fringes of the sprawling urban camp shot dead 25-year-old Ahmed Braika as he headed to dawn prayers.
An Israeli army spokesman said he had no information on the reported incident but was checking further.
The Islamic Jihad group said one of a group of its militants had died in a gunbattle with troops as they penetrated the Israeli army's buffer zone along the frontier with Egypt to attack an outpost, and the rest of the group escaped.
Israeli military sources said soldiers shot two militants approaching them in preparation for an attack. They could not say if the militants were dead.
Rafah has been a frequent cauldron of violence in a four-year-old Palestinian revolt against Israel.
Israel, bent on destroying militant groups before a planned withdrawal of Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005, on Saturday ended a 17-day offensive in the north of the territory in which 105 Palestinians, three Israelis and a Thai worker were killed.