Two Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip today, associates of the men and Palestinian medical workers said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops fired mortars at two men they spotted close to the border fence in the north of the enclave. They believed they were planting explosives, she said.
One of the dead was a member of Hamas and the other was from an allied group, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), representatives of the two groups said. A third man was wounded in the incident, according to medics working at a hospital where he was being treated.
It was the first time Israel had confirmed a fatal attack in Gaza in nearly a month. Two Hamas militants were also killed on September 1st, but Israel denied involvement in that case.
Since a war in January that killed over 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza, a cease-fire has broadly held, with sporadic exceptions.
Overnight, at least one rocket was fired towards the Israeli town of Sderot from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said. A radical Islamist group, which is opposed to Hamas and to the cease-fire with Israel, said it had fired a rocket overnight.
Both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are observing major religious holidays today - the Jewish New Year and the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.