JERUSALEM (AFP) - An Israeli woman was killed in a Palestinian mortar strike on a Jewish settlement in Gaza, as Israel prepared to mark Judaism's most solemn day of Yom Kippur amid fears of suicide bombings.
The attack was slammed by a close aide to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who accused the Palestinians of wanting to hinder a planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip next year.
"A woman was killed by a mortar shell that landed on her house in the Neve Dekalim settlement" in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli army spokesman told AFP, without giving the victim's name.
He said the mortars were fired from the nearby Palestinian town of Khan Yunis.
Local media named the victim as 24-year-old Tiferet Tratner, a Jerusalem resident on a visit to the settlement.
The latest death raised to 4,337 the number of people killed in the four-year-old intifada, including 3,317 Palestinians and 949 Israelis, according to an AFP count.
Mortars were also fired at the Morag settlement, likewise in southern Gaza, without causing any casualties.
Palestinian security sources said Israeli tanks fired on Khan Yunis in a swift apparent reprisal for the attacks, both of which were claimed by the radical Islamic Jihad and its larger rival Hamas in telephone calls to AFP.
"The Palestinians carry on with their never-ending murderous operations with the apparent intent to prevent Israel from seeing through its unilateral withrawal from the Gaza Strip," said Sharon's aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"The Palestinians want the conflict to go on but Israel will do its utmost to respond to these provocations and stop these murderous attacks," he added.
Sharon plans on dismantling all 21 Gaza settlements and another four on the northern West Bank by September 2005 despite fervent opposition from Israel's ultra-nationalist and settler fringe.
The deadly attack came as Israel was still reeling from a deadly militant infiltration into Morag on Thursday that left three Israeli soldiers dead as well as the three Palestinian assailants.
Israeli police were placed on high alert Friday morning, less than a day after troops arrested four Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, allegedly on their way to carry out suicide attacks in the Jewish state.
The daily Haaretz said Israel's internal security services, Shin Beth, had received no less than 40 warning of attacks for the 24-hour Yom Kippur holiday starting at sunset on Friday.
Shops were to shut down and all motorized traffic come to a complete halt until Saturday evening to observe the Day of Atonement -- a period of fasting, reflection and prayers on the holy day in the Jewish calendar.
Security guards and several thousand police, backed up by volunteers, were deployed in and around cities, especially market places where last-minute shoppers prepared for the holiday.
Additional forces were posted at synagogues and cemeteries, where thousands were expected to pay homage to fellow-citizens who fell in the 1973 Israeli-Arab war, known as the Yom Kippur war.
Checkpoints were also set up next to the West Bank to prevent infiltration by would-be Palestinian attackers.
The West Bank and Gaza were placed under a watertight closure on the eve of the Jewish new year a week ago. Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco said it would last until after the Feast of the Tabernacle, Sukkot in Hebrew, on October 8.
The Israeli-controlled border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt was also closed on Friday and was expected to remain so for at least two days, Egyptian officials told their country's MENA news agency.