GAZA, Sept 25: Israeli forces stormed into a Palestinian refugee camp on Saturday, killing one man and flattening rows of houses in a growing cycle of violence that threatens to complicate Israel's plan to withdraw from Gaza.

The raid in the southern Gaza Strip followed a mortar attack on a Jewish settlement that killed a 24-year-old woman on Friday, and the ambush killings of three Israeli soldiers guarding another settlement the day before.

A 60-year-old man was killed in an air strike at the start of the incursion into the Khan Younis camp, where UN relief workers said Israeli armoured bulldozers then destroyed up to 35 homes. It was not immediately known how many were inhabited.

Residents shaken from their beds only had time to grab a few belongings and flee before the start of demolition, a policy that international rights groups condemn as collective punishment but Israel calls self-defence.

Witnesses said up to 100 people were left homeless in the raid, which sparked gunbattles between troops and militants.

"We ran away carrying our crying children," said Mazen Qanan, 43. "My oldest son was hit by a bullet in the stomach."

The raid came on the fasting day of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, with Israel shut down and its borders sealed.

WORSENING BLOODSHED: Bloodshed has worsened in the Gaza Strip ahead of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's planned withdrawal of settlers and soldiers by the end of 2005.

Militants want to portray any Israeli pullout from occupied territory as fleeing under fire. But Israel's army appears determined to smash armed groups before leaving.

The Khan Younis raid began under cover of darkness. Residents said a missile crashed near a mosque and medics said it killed a man of around 60 and wounded three other civilians.

The Israeli army said it had fired at militants preparing to launch a rocket into the adjacent settlement of Neve Dekalim, where a mortar from the same spot on the camp's edge killed a woman settler hours before the start of Yom Kippur.

Accusing Sharon of "incitement to murder", settler spokesman Eran Sternberg said the government's offer to pay cash advances to settlers willing to leave their homes only egged on Palestinian militants against the Jewish enclaves.

Some 8,000 Israelis have settled on occupied land amid 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, which Israel captured along with the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.-Reuters/AFP