JABALIYA, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Two Palestinian children were killed by Israeli fire in the refugee camp of Jabaliya as Israel's deadly offensive in northern Gaza entered its ninth day.
Palestinian doctors identified them as Sliman Abu Ful and Raed Abu Zeid, both 14, and said their bodies had been ripped apart by what appeared to be a tank shell.
The Israeli army insisted the two people fired on had been "preparing to fire an improvised rocket".
"The pair were hit by a missile fired by a helicopter gunship," a spokesperson said.
"A drone flying over the area filmed two figures who were putting a rocket launcher in a firing position at an angle of 45 degrees," a second spokesperson said.
"The two figures moved away and there was a flash. A first attempt at firing apparently failed.
"The two figures then came back and we did not allow them to go ahead with a second attempt."
But witnesses at the scene told AFP that the teenagers had been rummaging through the ruins of a local youth club destroyed by armoured bulldozers two days before.
They also said they were hit by a tank shell.
"We were all playing in the ruins of the club because there is nothing else to do, the school is closed. We found water pipes in the wreckage and a tank started firing at us," said Abdullah Zeidan, 14.
"I got scared and moved back, but Raed and Sliman stood there, carrying pipes and the tank fired two shells. The second one tore their bodies to pieces," said another playmate Karam Abu Naji, also 14.
A young Palestinian wounded by Israeli army gunfire earlier this week in Jabaliya also died of his injuries on Thursday, hospital sources said.
Mohammed Abu Seif, 16, had been shot in the neck on October 1 and died at Gaza's Shifa hospital.
The deaths brought to 91 the number of Palestinians killed since Israeli armour first poured into the Gaza Strip on September 28. Five Israelis have also been killed in the territory during the incursion.
Despite Israel's Gaza operation, codenamed "Day of Penitence," two rockets launched from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel on Thursday, causing no casualties but damaging a house, Israeli military sources said.
The rockets landed in the town of Sderot, barely half a mile (one kilometre) from the Gaza border, the sources said.
The makeshift missiles used by Palestinian militants can carry a five-kilogramme (11-pound) explosive charge and have a 10-kilometre (six-mile) range, but are generally inaccurate.
Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas warned Wednesday that it would "continue and increase rocket firing" on Israel" and would "not stop launching rockets even if Israel leaves the northern Gaza Strip".
They said they were even developing a longer-range rocket that could strike deeper inside Israel.
Israeli officials were unrepentant about their onslaught, despite a growing international outcry which saw 11 countries support a critical draft resolution at the UN Security Council Tuesday night and three abstain, with Washington alone in expressing opposition. Israel's key ally used its veto to block adoption of the text.
"To end the operation, the condition is clear and unequivocal -- the firing on the Gaza Strip communities and Sderot must stop," a senior Israeli government official told AFP, asking not be identified.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's top aide, Dov Weisglass, sparked controversy by saying in a newspaper interview Wednesday that the goal of the premier's plans to pull troops and settlers out of Gaza by the end of next year 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.
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".