JABALIYA, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Israel's deadly offensive in northern Gaza entered its second week with the government vowing to press on until Palestinian rocket fire stopped and with militant chiefs pledging to intensify their attacks.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's closest advisor said the premier's aim was to sideline an internationally drafted peace roadmap but his office later put out a statement saying he remained committed to the US-backed blueprint.
A Thai worker and six Palestinians, three of them militants, were the latest victims of the massive Israeli campaign after Washington vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for a halt to the offensive, the Israeli army and Palestinian medics said.
Two fighters of the largest militant group, Hamas, were shot dead by Israeli troops as they attempted to infiltrate the Kfar Darom settlement in the southern Gaza Strip. A third militant died when an explosive charge he was carrying went off prematurely.
The Thai migrant labourer was employed on the settlement and died during 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 said to be in serious condition.
The deaths brought to 88 the number of Palestinians killed since the army launched its offensive against the northern Gaza Strip on September 28 to forge a buffer zone to keep Palestinians out of rocket range of southern Israel.
But Hamas remained defiant Wednesday, warning 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's military wing -- the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades -- told reporters in the town of Beit Lahia.
They said they were even developing a longer-range rocket that could strike deeper inside Israel.
Israeli officials were unrepentant about their onslaught, despite the mounting international criticism, which saw 11 countries support the critical draft resolution Tuesday night and three abstain, with Washington alone in expressing opposition.
"The operation will continue as long as necessary, until our forces can guarantee that there will be no more firing onto communities in Gaza and across the border," a senior government official told AFP, asking not be identified.
"To end the operation, the condition is clear and unequivocal -- the firing on the Gaza Strip communities and Sderot must stop."
Sharon's top aide, Dov Weisglass, sparked controversy by saying in a newspaper interview that the goal of the premier's Gaza pullout plan was to undermine the US-backed peace roadmap.
"The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process," Weisglass told the Israeli daily Haaretz.
"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 said, referring to steps promised in the blueprint.
Sharon's office later put out a statement, saying the prime minister "supports the roadmap, the only plan liable to help progress towards a viable political agreement".
In justifying its veto at the Security Council, Washington pointed to the draft resolution's failure to refer to Palestinian rocket fire on southern Israel, Sharon's pretext for the incursion.
US ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth said the text "lacks balance and credibility" because it "doesn't mention even one of the 450 Qassam rocket attacks launched against Israel over the past two years."
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."
Hamas charged the veto served to show that the US administration was "a partner in the Israeli aggression".
In other unrest Wednesday, a Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli army fire in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem.
And an Israeli helicopter gunship fired two rockets on a metal workshop in the Jabaliya area, lightly wounding two people, witnesses said.
The army confirmed the attack on the site, which had been targeted in the past, saying it was a Hamas arms factory.