GAZA CITY, Sept 8 (AFP) - Israeli troops staged an incursion into the northern Gaza Strip overnight in what the army said Wednesday was a bid to prevent Palestinian militants from firing more rockets on southern Israel.
About 20 tanks accompanied by bulldozers and backed by attack helicopters entered the eastern part of the town of Jabaliya and took up positions near the limits of the town of Beit Lahya and on hills.
Seven Palestinian rock-throwers were wounded when troops opened fire to disperse them.
The incursion came on the heels of a Monday night Israeli air strike in Gaza that killed 14 militants from the military wing of Hamas.
Israeli military sources said nine rockets had been launched over the past 48 hours, with one man lightly wounded Tuesday in the Israeli town of Sderot, just across the Gaza border.
"The whole purpose of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) presence in northern Gaza is to stop Qassam rockets from being fired," a military source said. "It's a pinpointed operation and we cannot say at this stage how long it will last and how it will develop."
Militants from the radical Islamist organization Hamas often fire maeshift Qassam rockets -- named after the group's armed wing, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades -- at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip.
The nearby town of Beit Hanun was surrounded by Israeli troops and its residents prevented from leaving the area, Palestinian security sources said.
Beit Hanun was taken over by troops for over a month last year in an attempt to stop the firing of rockets after two Israelis were killed in Sderot.
Even as troops had entered the area overnight, Palestinian militants managed to fire seven rockets Wednesday. They struck in Israel's southern Negev desert without causing any casualties, although a factory was damaged, the army said.
Israeli military sources said troops were stageing a brief raid in Al-Qarara, near the town of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said they searched houses and leveled down stretches of land.
She said the militant was also wounded and later ferried to a Jerusalem hospital for treatment before being interrogated.
The man's entourage named him 32-year-old Adel Zaatari.
The army spokeswoman said four other wanted militants had also been arrested in the West Bank.
In addition, Palestinian sources said three members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- a group loosely affiliated to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement -- were arrested in an Israeli army raid in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
The three militants and a civilian were picked up in a northern neighborhood in an operation involving around 15 Israeli armored vehicles and a helicopter providing cover.
Israeli troops on patrol in another area of the northern West Bank escaped injury when a car bomb exploded in their path.
The explosion went off in the Baqa Al-Sharqiya area, close to the border between the West Bank and Israel, Palestinian sources said.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed the failed attack.