11 more killed in ME violence

Israel's latest crackdown against a Palestinian uprising left at least nine Palestinians dead in a weekend of escalating violence throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Two Israelis were also killed in fighting, as tensions rise on both sides in the run-up to the country's January 28 election.

Israel's army has stepped up operations since back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings in Tel Aviv last week that killed 22 people.

Israeli helicopter gunships fired three missiles into a Gaza Strip orchard on Sunday, killing two Palestinian teenagers and wounding a Palestinian man, witnesses and medical officials said.

A senior Israeli security source confirmed an air strike on the orchard by the road between Khan Younis and Rafah refugee camps in Gaza and said "three wanted men were hit."

Palestinian hospital officials said none of the three teenagers killed in the missile strike, nor another youth wounded in the attack, were known to be members of militant groups waging the uprising for statehood.

Two members of the Hamas militant group who appeared to have been the intended target of the missile strike in the Gaza Strip fled the scene unscathed in a car, witnesses and medics said.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment. It has used helicopters to track and kill dozens of Palestinian militants, missions that have sometimes killed civilian bystanders and led to revenge attacks by militants.

Two gunmen and an Israeli were also killed in a clash along Israel's border with Egypt after a major Israeli tank raid into the nearby Palestinian-administered Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis in which a Palestinian was killed and 14 wounded in street battles.

In northern Israel, near its porous boundary with the West Bank, two Palestinian gunmen slipped into the town of Gadish and killed a local man before being shot dead by Israeli security forces, police officials said. Three Israeli soldiers were wounded.