JABALIYA, Gaza Strip, Oct 6 (AFP) - Israel's deadly offensive in northern Gaza entered its second week Wednesday as the Palestinian radical group Hamas threatened to step up rocket attacks and strike deeper inside the Jewish state.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated his support to the stalled roadmap for peace, after his closest adviser said the hawkish leader's aim was to freeze the peace process and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.
Six Palestinians, among them three fighters, and a Thai worker were killed in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the Israeli army and Palestinian medics said.
Two Hamas militants were shot dead by Israeli troops after they failed to infiltrate the Kfar Darom settlement in the southern Gaza Strip. The third fighter died when an explosive charge he was carrying went off.
The man from Thailand was employed on the settlement and died in exchanges of fire between the militants and troops.
Earlier, medics said three Palestinians were killed in Israeli tank strikes in the northern Gaza Strip overnight. Twenty Palestinians were reported wounded, two of them young women who were in serious condition.
The latest deaths bring to 88 the number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched an offensive in the northern Gaza Strip on September 28 in a bid to stop Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.
But Hamas defiantly warned Wednesday it would "continue and increase rocket firing" on Israel" and would "not stop launching rockets even if Israel leaves the northern Gaza Strip".
"The resistance will not stop and whether it wants to or not, the enemy will have to leave northern Gaza under rocket fire," masked militants from Hamas' armed wing -- Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades -- told reporters in Beit Lahia.
They also said a longer-range version of the Qassam rockets, named after the military wing, was being developed to strike deeper inside Israel.
The current Qassam rocket can carry a five-kilogram (11-pound) explosive charge and has a 10-kilometer (six-mile) range, but the homemade rocket is generally inaccurate.
In Israel, Sharon's office said the internationally-backed roadmap remained the only viable blueprint for peace with the Palestinians.
The prime minister "supports the roadmap, the only plan liable to help progress towards a viable political agreement", a statement said.
The statement came after the premier's top aide, Dov Weisglass, said that "the significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.
"And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the (Palestinian) refugees, the (final) borders and Jerusalem," he told the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Weisglass, who formerly served as Sharon's chief of staff, is one of the plan's architects.
The prime minister intends to unilaterally dismantle all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip next year and withdraw all troops from the territory, in addition to four settlements in the northern West Bank.
But Sharon has warned the pullout would not take place "under fire" from Gaza militants.
The United States, meanwhile, vetoed an Arab-backed draft resolution at the Security Council late Tuesday that urged Israel to end its Gaza raid. Britain, Germany and Romania abstained from the vote, and the 11 other council members voted for it.
The proposed resolution had called, among other things, for "the immediate cessation of all military operations in the area of northern Gaza and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from that area."
The draft did not, however, refer to Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli soil.
US ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth seized on that point, blasting the draft resolution as "disingenuous" and saying it "lacks balance and credibility".
The draft "doesn't mention even one of the 450 Qassam rocket attacks launched against Israel over the past two years, it doesn't mention the 200 rockets launched this year alone", Danforth said, defending the US veto.
Hamas charged the veto served to show that the US administration was "a partner in the Israeli aggression", while Israel has said the operation will go on as long as rocket fire continues.
Troops are carving out a large buffer-zone in the northern Gaza Strip to keep Palestinian militants at bay from its southern border to prevent the rocket attacks.
In other unrest Wednesday, a Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli army fire in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem.