Israeli troops have killed five Palestinian militants, Palestinian and military sources say.
The dead included two Hamas members who slipped across Israel's fenced boundary with Gaza for a rare cross-border attack.
Two other militants were killed while trying to plant a bomb near a Jewish settlement in an occupied part of Gaza, Palestinians said on Friday. At least one other gunman was killed and an Israeli soldier wounded in a shoot-out near another settlement.
An Israeli military source said two gunmen were shot and killed early today after breaching the heavily guarded fence around Gaza and approaching a kibbutz, or collective farm, in southern Israel's Negev desert.
One of the militants died in an explosion apparently caused by the detonation of a bomb or an explosives belt he was carrying, the source said.
Hamas said it had sent the gunmen, both from the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza, to carry out the attack.
Shortly afterward, soldiers at an outpost outside the settlement of Rafiah Yam in southern Gaza shot dead two Islamic Jihad militants planting a bomb nearby, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.
Soldiers later killed one militant in a gun battle between the southern Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom and the Kissufim crossing with Israel, security sources said. One soldier was wounded when the gunmen opened fire on an army jeep.
There has been almost no let-up in Gaza violence as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tries to push ahead on his plan to evacuate all settlements in the Gaza Strip by the end of next year.