GAZA CITY, Oct 3 (AFP) - Two Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli helicopter strike on a village in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday during a massive Israeli raid on the area, their movement said.
The men were preparing to fire a makeshift rocket from the area around Beit Hanun when the attack helicopter fired a missile towards them, they said.
A spokesman for the radical Popular Resistance Committees told AFP that the two slain men were militants from its armed wing, the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, and named them as Faadi Azanin and Loay Hamad.
He said a third militant had been seriously injured in the attack, which came after the three had fired at least one so-called Nasser 3 rocket towards Israel.
Their deaths bring to six the total number of Palestinians killed Sunday, five of them militants.
In total, 65 people have been killed since the start of a massive Israeli operation in the northern Gaza Strip late Tuesday, including 62 Palestinians and three Israelis, two of them soldiers.
Almost identical to the makeshift Qassam rockets made by the armed wing of the Hamas movement, the Nasser 3 is used by the Popular Resistance Committees, a group mostly made up of former activists from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction.
An army spokeswoman confirmed that two Palestinians had been killed in the strike which was launched after a group of men "were seen firing a Qassam rocket across the border into Israel" and were preparing to fire a second.
"The helicopter also destroyed a cart full of Qassam rockets," she added.
A total of 4,418 people have been killed since the outbreak of the intifada or uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000, including 3,394 Palestinians and 953 Israelis.