JERUSALEM (AFP) - A third fighter of the Palestinian hardline group Hamas was killed by Israeli forces during an infiltration bid in the Kfar Darom settlement of southern Gaza, Israeli military sources told AFP.
He was part of a three-man commando which attacked the Jewish settlement.
One of the militants was apparently killed when an explosive charge he was carrying went off. The other two managed to escape but were hunted down and shot dead by Israeli troops, the sources said.
A Thai worker was also killed in the settlement's greenhouses after being caught in exchanges of fire between the militants and soldiers.
The sources said earlier that the commando had fired a mortar shell and an anti-tank rocket at the settlement.
"Following the attack Israeli forces found a commando of three men in the settlement greenhouses and chased them out," one of the sources said.
Hamas' military wing -- the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades -- claimed the operation, during a press conference in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
Eighty-eight Palestinians have died in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli army on September 28 launched an offensive to stop Hamas cross-border rocket attacks on southern Israel.
The latest deaths brought the number of people killed since the September 2000 start of the four-year-old intifada to 4,451, including 3,425 Palestinians and 954 Israelis, according to an AFP count.