An Israeli air strike killed two Palestinian militants in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday, ambulance crews and local residents said.
The Israeli military said the strike, which it described as a joint operation with the Shin Bet internal security service, targeted a truck carrying a shipping container with an explosives-laden vehicle hidden inside.
The Israeli attack, a military spokeswoman said in Tel Aviv, foiled "an imminent terrorist strike on Israel".
Ambulance crews and residents in the town of Rafah, near Gaza's border with Egypt, said missiles fired from an Israeli aircraft hit a truck and a car, killing two members of the Islamic Jihad group and wounding 15 other people.
Residents reported a string of secondary explosions after the missiles struck the truck, indicating it may have contained explosives.
Some residents said the truck appeared to have been disguised as an Israeli vehicle and speculated militants might have been planning to use it to approach and attack Israel's nearby Kerem Shalom border terminal.
Islamic Jihad has been behind numerous rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip against southern Israel.
Minutes after the air strikes, several rockets hit Sderot, an Israeli town near Gaza, causing no casualties.
The Gaza Strip is controlled by Hamas Islamists, who routed fighters from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction in a brief civil war in June.